Hula for the Home Front (A Nanea Classic Book 2) by Kirby Larson

It's February 1942, almost two months since the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Nanea Mitchell, 9, is getting ready to go back to school. But school won't be the same for her and her friend Lily now that their other friend Donna has been sent back to the United States with her mother. And then, she finds a new girl sitting in Donna's seat at school.

To make matters worse, the new girl, Dixie Morena, is given the important job of class War Stamps monitor, a job Nanea thought she should have been given. It's a job that involves the weekly sale of war stamps to the kids in the class, with the hope of winning a coveted Minuteman Flag if they buy enough stamps. Nanea tries to be friendly, but Dixie doesn't seem interested, in fact, she seems bored - always yawning and putting her head on her desk. But after an incident that finds both girls in the principal's office, Nanea, Lily, and Dixie finally become friends.

Nanea is also worried that her older brother David will enlist as soon as he turns 18 in May. David does a lot of volunteer work for Lieutenant Gregory, but wants to do more for the war effort. Older sister Mary Lou, 15, also does volunteer work for the war, and is never without her knitting, making needed items for soldiers.

Nanea comes up with the idea of forming the Honolulu Helpers, a club to help the war effort for kids

her age. Volunteers would do things like collecting bottles, babysitting so mothers could take first-aid classes, working in Victory Gardens, baking cookies, serving meals, and maybe even helping out in hospitals. But despite school, friends, and the Honolulu Helpers, Nanea still worries about her brother, the night time air raid drills, and the possibility of losing her beloved dog Mele again.

She is so afraid of losing Mele, that Nanea keeps her close by except during school. One day, as she is playing some records in her room, Nanea notices that Mele is moving to the music. Naturally, Nanea decides to teach her to hula, which, thanks to some tasty cookies, Mele picks up quite quickly. Later, at the USO show, the soldiers is so entertained by her hula dancing dog, that Nanea comes up with an idea of how to bring Mele to the soldiers in the hospital, who couldn't come to the show. But how to do that if dogs and kids aren't allowed in hospitals? Nanea enlists the help of Lieutenant Gregory, maybe he can convince the hospital to find a way.

Meanwhile, Nanea's class is falling behind with war stamp purchases, and it looks like there will be no Minuteman flag for them. But their teacher, Miss Smith, has a surprise guest come in a give them a pep talk. Will that help?

When you read an American Girl story, it's a safe bet that nothing too awful or scary is going to happen. They essentially present the life of a 9 year-old girl during a period of change and focus on how main character adjusts to those changes. There is lots of historical information introduced along the way, and the Nanea books are no different. Kirby Larson, who has had plenty of experience researching and writing historical fiction for young readers, has written the first two books, Growing Up with Aloha and this one.

I thought Hula on the Home Front was a well written work, that easily carried over from the first book and increased our understanding of what it was like being a 9 year-old at that time and place. Nanea is a sweet, generous character, but like all girls at some point, she also has to deal with feelings of jealousy and learn how to gracefully accept the new girl in her life, even as she misses her old friend. But Nanea also must deal with other big changes that impact her life - her father is often away from home working double shifts, while her mother helps out at the Red Cross. Then there is rationing, blackout curtains, and the Dogs for Defense program. Would Dogs for Defense want Mele? Could Nanea part with her beloved dog?

I do think it would be nice if more about Lily's family, who happen to be Japanese, were also included, especially given what was happening in the US at the time. Larson does introduce the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast, but doesn't really go into any detail about it. Could there be a book about Lily in the works?

Nanea is a nice addition to the WWII American Girl books, though I'm sorry they won't be publishing as many different ones as they did with the original historical characters. My kids, at home and in school, really loved reading those books and most never even owned a doll.

A lot of Hula on the Home Front does presuppose that the reader has read the first book where most of information about Hawaiian life and culture was given. There is still some given here, along with Hawaiian words with pronunciation and meaning found at the back of the book. Readers also do learn more about the meanings behind the movements of hula dancing, and its purpose.

As always, do read the section Inside Nanea's World for more information about war stamps, clubs formed by kids and other war time efforts. Though not a nice as the earlier American Girl stories, it is still helpful.

Hula on the Home Front will please AG fans, as well as those who like WWII history.

This book is recommended for readers age 8+
This book was purchased for my personal library.

The 1942 Minuteman Flag Nanea's class hoped to win was
 awarded by the Treasury Department

Growing Up with Aloha (A Nanea Classic Book 1) by Kirby Larson

By the time Mattel rebranded the historical dolls from the American Girls collection, my Kiddo’s doll days were behind her, so I didn’t really pay attention to what was going on with any of these new dolls until I read that Molly, the WWII girl on the home front, was being retired. Molly was the fun favorite in our house, and we were sad to see her.

Now, however, there’s a new WWII girl in the American Girls collection and her name is Nanea Mitchell, a 9 year old girl who lives on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. She has two older siblings, a sister named Mary Lou, 15, and a brother named David, 17. Their mother was born on the island and is Hawaiian, and their dad came from Oregon and is white. 

It’s 1941 and Nanea would like her parents to stop treating her like a baby and give her more responsibility. With the help of her friends, Lily, who is Japanese, and Donna, who is from California, Nanea decides to enter a contest that requires contestants to do a number of nice things for others.

In the first few chapters of Growing Up with Aloha, readers see that Nanea’s life is pretty much what you would expect - there’s school, friends, her little dog Mele, but there are also hula lessons with her grandmother, practicing for the big USO Christmas show, and making lei’s to be sold on Boat Day - the day ships full of tourist arrived in Hawaii. Luckily, there are also a few opportunities for Nanea to do some nice things for others.

But on December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor is attacked and everything changes overnight. Nanea’s dad, who works in Pearl Harbor’s shipyard, and Richard, a Boy Scout with first aid training, both leave immediately to see what they can do to help. Everyone is scared, and there are all kinds of rumors about more attacks coming, and to make thing more difficult for the people, the radios are knocked offline. And then, Nanea realizes that her little Mele is missing.

Lily’s father is immediately taken into custody by two FBI men because he is Japanese and Lily's anger and fear cause her to suddenly have trouble being friends with Nanea and Donna. 

Once war is declared, it doesn’t take long for the women of Oahu to mobilize for the war effort, and despite missing her father, brother and dog, and despite the changes war brings, it is an opportunity for Nanea to prove just how responsible she can be. Will she succeed in accomplishing the requirements of the contest in time, though?

This is a first book (so far, there are three) and so there’s lots of introductory information in it, which, at times, make the storyline it a little awkward, but it’s a very interesting look at the impact the bombing of Pearl Harbor had on the people of Oahu as seen through the eyes of a 9 year old girl. 

Growing Up with Aloha also contains a lot of interesting information about Hawaiian culture and life, and there is a liberal sprinkling of Hawaiian words used (there’s a glossary with pronunciation help in the back). 

Nanea’s home front story is very different from Molly’s, mostly because her story is set in 1941 in a place that did get bombed, and Molly's stories are set in 1944 in a relatively safe place in middle America. And, whereas Molly was more about the war in Europe, I suspect Nanea’s will be more about the war in the Pacific.

Growing Up with Aloha was written by Kirby Larson, no stranger to middle grade WWII books (see my reviews of Liberty, Dash and Duke). I found this to be every bit as satisfying, readable, and informative novel as Larson's other historical fiction.

The word Aloha is defined in the glossary as meaning hello, goodbye, love, compassion, and it does mean those things, but it is more than that. The school that Nanea and her friends go to is named after Queen Liliuokalani (1838-1917), Hawaii’s first queen and last monarch and who is credited with saying that Aloha Spirit “… is hear what is not said, to see what cannot be seen, and to know the unknowable.” As you read Growing Up with Aloha, you’ll notice here are many examples of Aloha Spirit in the book as Nanea herself comes to understand it better. 

And do read Inside Nanea's World at the end of the book for more background information about the effects the bombing of Pearl Harbor had on her and the other Hawaiian people.

This book is recommended for readers age 8+
This book was purchased for my personal library

Hunt for the Bamboo Rat by Graham Salsibury

Zenji Watanabe is 17 years old in the summer of 1941, a Nesei born on Honolulu to Japanese parents.  Naturally, he is fluent in both Japanese and English.  He has also just graduated from high school and is thinking about studying Buddhism in Japan, Meanwhile, he was working to help support his family - mother, older brother Henry, younger sister Aiko, father deceased.

All that changes when Zenji's JROTC commanding officer Colonel Blake shows up at his house one day.  He wants Zenji to be interviewed and tested, but for what?  To travel to the Philippines to translate some documents from Japanese to English.

But when Zenji arrives in Manila, he is instructed to stay at the Momo, a hotel where Japanese businessmen like staying, to befriend them and keep his ears and eyes open.  He is given the key to a mail box that he is required to check twice a day to be use for leaving and receiving information and instructions.  Zenji is also given  a contact person, Colonel Jake Olsten, head of G2, the Military Intelligence Service, and even a code name - the Bamboo Rat.

In December 1941, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and the war in the Pacific begins.  It isn't long before the Americans are forced to withdraw from Manila.  Zenji chooses to remain, giving his seat on the last plane out to another Japanese American with a family.  Not long after that, he is taken prisoner by the Japanese, who torture and threaten him trying to make him admit he is the Bamboo Rat, and considering him a traitor to his county - Japan.

Eventually, the Japanese give up and Zenji is sent to work as a houseboy/translator for the more humane Colonel Fujimoto.  Fujimoto seems to forget that Zenji is a prisoner of war, and begins to trust him more and more.

By late 1944, it's clear the Japanese are losing the war in the Pacific.  They decide to evacuate Manila and go to Baguio.  Even though food is in short supply, Zenji starts to put some aside for the day he may be able to escape into the jungle and wait for the war to end.

But of course, the best laid plans don't always work out the way we would like them to and that is true for Zenji.  Will he ever make it back to Honolulu and his family?

WOW! Graham Salisbury can really write an action-packed, exciting and suspenseful novel.  Salisbury was born and raised in Hawaii, so he gives his books a sense of place that pulsating with life.  Not many authors explore the Japanese American in Hawaii experience during World War II and not many people realize that they were never, for the most part, interned in camps the way the Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians on the west coast of the US and Canada were.  And although Hawaii was only an American territory until it became a state in 1959, if you were born there, you had American citizenship, just like Zenji continuously tells his Japanese captors throughout Hunt for the Bamboo Rat.

At first, I thought Zenji was too gentle, too innocent and too trusting for the kind of work he was recruited to do, which amounted to the dangerous job of spying.  But he proved to be a strong, tough character even while he retained those his aspects of his nature.  Ironically, part of his survival as a spy and a POW is based in what his Japanese Buddhist priests had taught him before the war.

One of the nice elements that Salisbury included are the little poems Zenji's mother wrote.  Devising a form of her own, and written in Kanji, it is her way of expressing her feelings.  They are scattered throughout the book.  Zenji receives one in the mail just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and keeps it with him as long as he can, deriving comfort from it.

Like the first novel I read by Salisbury, Eyes of the Emperor, one kept me reading straight through until I finished it.  It is the fourth novel in his Prisoners of the Empire series, and it is a well-crafted, well-researched story, but it is a stand alone novel.  Zenji's story is based on the real wartime experiences of Richard Motoso Sakakida.

True to form, Salisbury brings in a lot of history, along with real people and events, but be careful, fact and fiction are seamlessly woven together.  He also includes the tension between the Filipino people and the Japanese after the Philippines are occupied by the Japanese and the cruel treatment of the Filipino people.   And included is the tension between Chinese and Japanese in Hawaii because of the Nanjing massacre of Chinese civilians in 1937/38.

All of this gives Hunt for the Bamboo Rat a feeling of authenticity.  There is some violence and reading the about Zenji's torture isn't easy, so it may not appeal to the faint at heart.

Hunt for the Bamboo Rat is historical fiction that will definetely appeal to readers, whether or not they particularly enjoy WWII fiction. And be sure to look at the Author's Note, the Glossary and additional Resources at the end of the novel.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book was purchased for my personal library

Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salisbury

Eddy Okubo, 16, may have parents who were born in Japan, but he was born in Hawaii and considers himself strictly American.  Eddy is a smart kid and has already graduated from high school.  So far, though, all has been doing is helping his father out with his boat building business, not really know what he wants to do in life.

Now, Eddy thinks enlisting in the US Army might be something he would like to do after hearing about it from his friends, Chik and Cobra, both 18, who have just been drafted.  Trouble is that his Pop has other plans for him - he wants Eddy to go to Japan to learn about his culture and even expects Eddy to be loyal to the Emperor.  Pop's attitude has caused many clashes between Eddy and his father, who still holds on dearly to his Japanese heritage.

But, with Japan already at war, both are aware that things are heating up on the island for the Japanese who live there and it is no real surprise when the boat they have just finished building is set on fire and sinks.  In an attempt to prove his loyalty as an American citizen, Eddy forges his birth certificate and joins the army.  No sooner does he announce this at home, and his father stops speaking to him.

Seven weeks later, on his first leave, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.  Eddy's father sees the sneak attack as cowardly and shameful and tells Eddy "No make shame for this family.  You go. Fight for your country.  Die, even, but die with honor." (pg 41)  Eddy races back to his barracks, where soldiers are being loaded into trucks, everyone except for Eddy, Chik and Cobra and about 600 other island boys.  Instead, they are given tools and told to dig trenches on the base, and for the first time, they are referred to as "Japs" by their new Lieutenant.  Worse still, as they dig the trenches, machine guns are pointed at their backs, ready to shoot should they make one wrong move.

From then on, life in the army changes for Eddy and his friends.  No longer treated like soldiers, they become "grunts" and "Japs," isolated from the rest of the soldiers.  Eventually, the small number of Japanese Americans are separated from the rest of the island boys and forced to live in tents near the shoreline, again with machine guns pointed their way at all times.  Their job - to shoot any Japanese soldiers who might try to land or be shot themselves.

After a while, they are sent to the mainland, and while traveling to Camp McCoy, WI, they see other Japanese Americans who have been herded into internment camps.  At Camp McCoy, Eddy's unit is finally given the designation the Hundredth Infantry Battalion and for once, their immediate superiors are also of Japanese descent.

After a short stay at Camp McCoy, around 25 members of the Hundredth are transferred again.  A Swiss émigré had managed to convince President Roosevelt that dogs could be trained to sniff out enemy Japanese because they have a different smell than non-Japanese people.  Eddy and his friends are picked to go the Cat Island, MS, where they must participate in the training of army dogs by becoming the "hate bait" necessary to teach the dogs to hate and kill Japanese soldiers under the direction of the Swiss émigré.

This is the longest and by far the most disturbing part of Eyes of the Emperor.  And as I read it, it boggled my mind to think that we could treat human beings with such complete disregard for their lives, since much of what they were forced to do is insulting, humiliating and dangerous.  But remembering his father's words, Eddy always does what he is ordered to do - with honor.

In his very informative Author's Note, Salisbury writes that Eddy's story is based on real events and interviews he had with soldiers from the Hundredth Infantry Battalion Separated (as they were referred to, meaning separated from the rest of the army).  Some of the characters in the story are real men who actually experienced the events Salisbury writes about.  In addition, many of the men in the battalion eventually went on to distinguish themselves in battle when they were finally allowed to do what they had signed up for.  In fact, Salisbury points out that every man who was on Cat Island received at least one purple heart and one bronze star.  Salisbury has written a sensitive, perceptive yet hard hitting novel dealing with xenophobia and how it is experienced by those it is directed at simply because of how they look.  Indeed, this novel resonates even today.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book was bought for my personal library

A PDF teaching guide for Eyes of the Emperor and Under the Blood Red Sky, both by Graham Salisbury is available here.

The experience of one Japanese American soldier, Ray Nosak, who was forced to participate in the Cat Island experiment can be found here.