Jeanne Wakatsuki
Before she married novelist James Houston—long before—the memoirist of this book was a seven year old girl who one day was watching her father sail off on his fishing boat and two weeks later was being bussed to the desert to live in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Her story is not just one of a young girl watching her family get torn apart as she essentially makes it through this horrible experience on her own, but also of a teenage girl trying to put her life together amid the emotional devastation the experience has wrought.
Papa (Wakatsuki Ko)
Jeanne’s father has his dignity stripped from him by not being able to provide for his family and this indignity is compounded because he left Japan in the first place due to the diminishing lack of respect for the samurai class there of which he was a member. Life gets no easier for Jeanne after the war when she manages to become popular enough at high school to be named carnival queen even though the teachers are actively campaigning against her. Papa is the bigger threat, however, when he finds out she won the vote—in his mind—by dressing inappropriately in front of boys.
Woody
Woody is Jeanne’s brother and becomes the image of what Japanese-American men who wanted to avoid the internment camps were forced to do. As a young male of age, he is given the choice of internment or signing a loyalty oath to the United States. Although an American citizen by virtue of birth as a second-generation Nisei, he is conflicted because signing the oath also seems by definition a rejection of loyalty to his Japanese ancestry. Ultimately, he signs the oath and is drafted into service. After the war, Woody’s conflicted feelings loyalty are still burning strong enough to urge him to actually visit Japan to connect with that ancestry.
Radine
Radine is Jeanne’s high school friend, but also a symbol of the subtleties of racism against Japanese after the war. When they first meet, Radine is shocked to find that Jeanne speaks English. After this rocky start, however, they become fast friends, but it is not long before it becomes apparently that though alike in so many ways, Radine has opportunities open to her that Jeanne will never have simply because of her Japanese ancestry.
