Baseball Saved Us

Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki is a very different look at the Japanese Internment. Because it is written for a younger audience it only mentions the main ideas usually associated with the Japanese internment and instead focuses on what any young boy would choose to focus on in this situation...baseball. This story gave an entirely new perspective to internment. Sometimes we forget that children do not fully understand what is happening in situations like this one, but they do still feel the hurt and the injustice. This story gives the reader the idea that baseball was the focus of this camp. Baseball took away the feeling that these people were trapped in a camp to do nothing for however long, and gave them something to focus on. I loved the art in this book. Even simply the color scheme of the drawings gives the reader a sense of the dust and the heat that was the Japanese's entire world while they were held in these camps. I like that you can feel the drawings. When I read the book I could feel the dryness, the heat and the dust that covered everything. I think the relation to a lot of little boys will make this story hit home to more children. A lot of kids struggle with being the smallest on a sports team. Aside from the setting, this book has a great message for kids who are not always the best at something. I thought this story was a little vague at times, which could have been intentional. I understood not going into detail with the whole internment situation, but I thought more detail could have been added about the games and the teams. Overall I thought this was a great book.