History Smashers: Pearl Harbor by Kate Messner, illustrated by Dylan Meconis

Reading History Smashers: Pearl Harbor, made me realize that I've read and reviewed a lot of books about the events of December 7, 1941, but most of them were novels - good novels but fiction nevertheless. Amazingly, I've never read a nonfiction book about Pearl Harbor for this blog, so I was pleased to read this new book by Kate Messner from her series History Smashers. 

Messner takes a look not only at the facts surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor, but also looks at some of the myths and legends that have circulated ever since. And she begins at the beginning, debunking the popular idea that the attack "happened completely out of the blue, with no warning and nothing to suggest there might be trouble." By carefully and succinctly looking at Japanese history from 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry led an expedition to try to open up isolationist Japan to trade with other countries, Messner shows how opening this small island country led to its desire for more land and more natural resources, eventually leading to the invasion of Manchuria and China in the 1930s.

 Following Germany's lead, Japan also set her sites on islands in the Pacific already colonized by other nations, including the US. After Japan signed a agreement with Germany and Italy in which they promised that if one were attacked, the others would help defend them. Feeling protected and now quite militarized, Japan invaded French Indochina.

Next, Messner looks at the errors in judgement made by the United States that led to such devastation when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. She goes back to 1924, when an army officer named William Mitchell was sent to evaluate the preparedness of US forces in the Pacific and Far East. He warned that Japan was thinking about expanding its empire, had its sites sent on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines and that that would eventually lead to war. But by 1939, Americans didn't want to go to war and so President Roosevelt tried negotiating with Japan to maintain peace. While Japan readied itself for the attack, by training pilots, redesigning torpedoes for the shallow waters where the American fleet had been moved to, mistakes, miscommunications, and incomplete intelligence gathering all led to what ultimately felt like a surprise attack to Americans, all of which Messner carefully looks at.   

History Smashers: Pearl Harbor is a short but very informative, well researched look at the attack on Pearl Harbor. Not only does Messner lay out her facts and debunk the myths surrounding the attack that led America into WWII, but she takes this very complicated event and makes it accessible to young readers. Plus, she takes the narrative beyond Pearl Harbor and looks at the racist treatment and incarceration of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the US. 

Messner includes lots of informative sidebars introducing readers to people, places, and histories, as well as lots of photographs and maps. There is extensive back matter that includes A World War II and Pearl Harbor Timeline, an Author's Note, Books, Websites and Museums to Visit for further exploration, and an excellent Bibliography.

This is a book that should be read by anyone interested in WWII. How good is it? Well, I thought I knew a lot about Pearl Harbor, but even I learned a few new facts.

This book is recommended for readers age 8+

This book was an eARC gratefully received from NetGalley

2017 Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day

Today is National Pearl Harbor Day and at a time when it feels like we are edging closer and closer to another war, it's a good time reflect on that day 76 years age that forced the United States into World War II when a sneak attack on the naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by the Japanese decimated the Pacific fleet. This is a copy of the dispatch sent by Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, who was the commander in Chief of the US Pacific Fleet to all navy command.

Source: https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/december-07

And I can't count the number of times I've read the words "Air Raid On Pearl Harbor X This Is Not Drill" in books I've reviewed for this blog. The following are some of the books about Pearl Harbor that I think readers may find insightful:

What was Pearl Harbor? by Patricia Brennan Demuth

illustrated by John Mantha

2012 Grosset & Dunlap

A Boy at War: A Novel of Pearl Harbor

by Harry Mazer

2002 Simon & Schuster BFYR

I Survived #4: The Bombing of Pearl Harbor, 1941

by Lauren Tarshis

2011 Scholastic Press

Nanea: Growing Up with Aloha

by Kirby Larson

2017 American Girl

Under the Blood Red Sun (Prisoners of the Empire #1)

by Graham Salisbury

1994 Delacorte Press

Eyes of the Emperor (Prisoners of the Empire #2)

by Graham Salisbury

2005 Wendy Lamb Books

Hunt for the Bamboo Rat (Prisoners of the Empire #3)

by Graham Salisbury

2014 Wendy Lamb Books

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

I Survived #4: I Survived the Bombing of Pearl Harbor, 1941 by Lauren Tarshis

Living in New York City, Danny Crane, 11, and his best friend Finn were always in trouble.  Danny's father had skipped out before he was born, so his mother worked as a nurse by day and cleaned offices at night to support them and was often not home.  There are just too many kids in Finn's family for anyone to keep an eye on him  The two boys skip school, sneak into the movies, and pretty soon, they were hanging out with gangster Earl Gasky.

So, in late1941, Danny's mother takes a nursing job at the hospital at Hickam Air Force base on Oahu, Hawaii.  Danny hasn't been living in Hawaii for very long before he hatches a plan to stowaway on a ship bound for San Francisco on December 7th, and from there, he plans to cross the country riding the rails back to Finn and the life he loves and wants.

On the morning of December 6th, Danny meets his new neighbors when toddler Aki Sudo wanders into the Cranes backyard.  The Sudos are a family of Japanese descent that had been born in Hawaii.  And Aki Sudo may only have been 3 years old, but he knew every plane the Americans had in their Air Force, thanks to the detailed drawings his fisherman father drew for him.

Danny likes the Sudos, but he is still determined to get back to Finn and NYC.  Yet, on the morning of December 7th, Danny is having a hard time getting out of bed and setting his plan in motion.  Thinking about his mother and how she will feel when she discovers him gone, Danny is jolted out of bed by little Aki's cries.  Planes, swarms of them, are coming and they aren't American.  Suddenly, as the two boys are heading to the Sudo home, they hear loud explosions followed by fire and smoke.  Pearl Harbor is under attack.

Returning Aki to his mother, Danny decides he needs to get the Hickam, to find his own mother.  But along the way, there is another round of bombing, and shooting.  Then, Danny meets Mack, a  lieutenant and pilot of a B-17.  Mack likes Mrs. Crane, but Danny was resentful of that.  Now, though, with a bullet wound to his arm, he and Danny try to make their way to Hickam together.

But, will the two be able to survive the rain of bullets and bombs the Japanese pilots are unleashing on all of Pearl Harbor?

I Survived the Bombing of Pearl Harbor is the 4th book in this popular, action packed I Survived series for boys about boys living in different time periods and facing different historical disasters and making them real coming of age stories.  And, like the others, it won't let the reader down.  There is plenty of real historical information couched in the fictional story of Danny and since Danny more or less sees the attack on Pearl Harbor from a distance, the descriptions of it are realistic, but not so graphic they will upset the age appropriate reader.

One of the side issues that Lauren Tarshis addresses in this particular story is how easy it was for boys like Danny to fall into the wrong kind of life.  Danny is at an age when friends can be all important, so the reader sees how he is torn between staying with his mother and his loyalty to his friend and partner in crime Finn.  These two friends were on their way to being in real trouble when Mrs. Crane moved Danny to Hawaii.  Juvenile delinquency was a problem back then because so many parents, like Mrs. Crane, had to work long hours, often at two jobs.  Doing little things for someone like Earl Gasky was just the beginning.  Both boys are at an age when they could have gone either way and I wondered what happened to Finn, left in NYC.

Since I Survived the Bombing of Pearl Harbor is a work of historical fiction, the author has included lots of back matter for further exploration.  There is a lengthy Q&A about the actual attack, a Pearl Harbor Time Line, Pearl Harbor facts and resources for reading other books about kids caught in the bombing of December 7, 1941.

In addition, the publisher of the I Survived series, Scholastic, has put a Teacher's Guide online that is compatible with Common Core State Standards and it can be downloaded HERE

This book is recommended for readers age 7+
This book was purchased for my personal library

Remembering Pearl Harbor

Today is the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entrance into World War II

...a day that will live in infamy

Citizen 13660 by Miné Okubo

When I was a kid, I read comic books, lots of them and all kinds – everything from Archie to Superman. So I know the power of putting together graphics and text. And I have to confess, that when I was in school, we could still find Classics Illustrated* in second hand comic stores and I may have actually used one or two of these for book reports. But today, all kinds’ graphic books are available, of considerably better quality than Classics Illustrated were and very popular among readers of all ages. Now, more and more graphic books are being written and published that cover important aspects of history and, in the same way Art Spiegelman’s Maus books are used in schools to study the Holocaust, Miné Okubo’s Citizen 13660 is an ideal vehicle for presenting a different aspect of World War II to students.

Miné Okubo was studying in Europe on an art fellowship when war was declared in 1939. She managed to get herself to the home of some friends in Berne, Switzerland and after a long wait and many difficulties, finally obtained the necessary papers she needed to travel to France. From there, she set sail for the US on the last boat out of Bordeaux. Shortly after Miné arrived back in the United States, her mother passed away and she went to live with her brother, a student in Berkley, California.

Things went well for them, even when the US declared war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. But as suspicion and fear grew, President Roosevelt was forced to issue Executive Order 9022 in 1942. Miné was required to report for an interview that would lead to her eventual relocation in an internment camp: “As a result of the interview, my family name was reduced to No. 13660.” (pg 19 left below.) The Okubo siblings were then issued a number of tags to use for their belongings and themselves with this number.

They were scheduled to leave on May 1, 1942 for the Tanforan Assembly Center at the race track in San Bruno, California. At the camp they were assigned a former horse stall in a stable to use as their living quarters, with no privacy or conveniences (pg 35 below right.) It was here that Miné decided to use her talent as an artist to record the day to day life and small events in an internment camp.



On September 16, 1942, Miné and her brother were relocated again, this time to the Central Utah Relocation Center called Topaz. Conditions here were somewhat better, and eventually restrictions were loosened making life more bearable until they finally left.

Citizen 13660 is the first personal account of what life was like for people in a Japanese internment camp. It was originally published in 1946, but went out of print in the 1950s when people wanted to forget the war. By the 1960s and early 1970s many Sensi, or Japanese-Americans who were born in the camps, were incensed about what had happened to their parents and grandparents and that it had all been forgotten, brushed under the rug, so to speak. Wanting to understand more about their historical past in the US, these students were a moving force behind the establishment of Asian Studies programs as part of many university curriculums. One of the results of this was a reprinting of Citizen 13660 in 1973 and again in 1983.

The structure of the book is similar to a picture book. Each page has one graphic with text below it. Each graphic is done in black and white, some are done in great detail, and others are simpler, while text can range from one line to very extensive. Miné is in every graphic, reinforcing the idea that she has witnessed what she draws and writes, and never relies on rumor or hearsay. The loss of her family name for a number sets the tone of this memoir, which is decidedly impersonal factual reporting. Aside from the author, the reader never learns the name of any other person not even that of her brother reinforcing the feeling of invisibility the Miné must have felt. Ironically, this objective technique proves to be a very effective style for conveying the feelings of the internees, their anger, confusion, disgrace, humiliation, injustice, loss and even patriotism, resulting in a very emotional document about this period in American history. It is not surprising that this technique works for her – Miné Okubo once described herself as “a realist with a creative mind.”

The National Park Service has provided information on Tanforan Assembly Center at the National Park Service Confinement and Ethnicity

More information about the Topaz Internment Camp at the Topaz Museum

Miné Okubo passed away on February 10, 2001 and her obituary may be found at Miné Obuko; Her Art Told of Internment

This book is recommended for readers aged 12 and up.
This book was borrowed from the Hunter College Library.

For those who don’t know about Classics Illustrated, they were a series of comic books, which were adaptations of classic literature. I remember using this one in 7th grade (the other one was Black Beauty; I did go back and really read The Red Badge of Courage, but not Black Beauty)

Non-Fiction Monday is hosted this week by Tales from the Rushmore Kid 

A Boy at War: a Novel of Pearl Harbor by Harry Mazer

Today is the 69th anniversary of Pearl Harbor day, the day that the Japanese empire attacked the American base at Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii and American officially entered World War II. In his speech, President Roosevelt called the attack a “…date which will live in infamy.” For high school student Adam Pelko, it was a day that started like any other and a day that ended like no other.

Adam has moved around his entire life because his father is a lieutenant in the navy, and had recently been transferred to the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. It is the first time Adam has been able to go to a regular high school, not a base school and once again, he must make new friends. The two friends he makes are Davi Mori, a Japanese-American boy and Martin Kahahawai, a Hawaiian. However, Adam’s father doesn’t want him to be friends with a Japanese kid since war with Japan is imminent. He reminds Adam that what they do, including who their friends are, reflects not only on them as a military family, but also on the United States Navy. His father firmly believes that Japanese loyalties would not be towards America, and that even Japanese-Americans can’t be trusted if war comes.

But Adam has already made a date to go fishing with Davi on Sunday. Saturday evening his father is called back to the Arizona until Sunday afternoon to cover for the duty officer, who had a family emergency. With his father gone, Adam decides to meet Davi and give him some excuse about not being able to go fishing, but when Martin shows up too, Adam loses his nerve. The boys ride their bikes over to the naval base at Pearl Harbor, slip under a fence, find a rowboat and take it out into the harbor to fish.

They stop rowing within sight of the battleships docked around Ford Island in the harbor. Before they even have a chance to start fishing, they hear the whine of planes. At first, the boys don’t think the planes and explosions are real, that maybe they are for a movie or just a mistake, even after a hot blast batters them. But as more and more bombs fall, Adam realizes that it is a real attack and the planes are Japanese. And when he sees Davi waving his arms and cheering, Adam suddenly begins to suspect that his father was right about not trusting the Japanese:

Why was Davi cheering? What was he doing? Signaling them? Yes, signaling them! He was Japanese. Japanese first! Who had said to come to Pearl Harbor to “fish”? Who had “found” the boat? Who had gotten them out here? “Dirty Jap!” Adam dragged Davi down. He wanted to get him. Kill him. Drown him. (pg44)

Martin breaks up the fight and the boys start rowing towards shore, but when Adam looks over towards his dad’s ship, he sees the USS Arizona bounce in the air, split apart, start burning and finally sink (it sank in 9 minutes.)

Almost immediately a plane flies over the rowboat and starts shooting at them. The boys are blown out of the boat, and Martin is badly injured with a long splinter of wood through his chest. Davi and Adam manage to get him back to shore and into a Red Cross car, but not before a soldier attacks Davi with the butt of his gun, yelling "I got a Jap!" (pg 50)  With Davi and Martin in the car along with wounded soldiers, Adam rides on the running board, holding on to the center post of the car, but is thrown from it when the car swerves to avoid going into the harbor.

Adam finds himself alone, returns to the rowboat and is mistaken for a sailor by an officer who demands he be rowed out to the USS West Virginia.  Adam is recruited to help carry ammunition to the guns on the West Virginia, but soon flees the ship and begins helping to pull wounded men from the water and bring them to shore. As one point, he is even issued a rifle. For the rest of the day, Adam remains in the Pearl Harbor area, helping and trying to find any information about his father, hoping he was not on his ship at the time of the attack for some reason. Finally, late in the day, Adam decides to sneak away from the base and return home. But his day and his story aren’t over yet.

A Boy at War is a small book, but a powerful narrative. It is the story of a boy who becomes a man in one single day, but a man who can think for himself. At the heart of the story is the theme of racism, or what one reviewer call racial profiling. When the Japanese attacked and the battle cry “Remember Pearl Harbor” was sounded, it became hard for many Americans to differentiate between the Japanese of the Empire and the Japanese who were loyal to the United States. According to Mazer’s Author Notes, in Lt. Pelko talk with his son he was stating the Navy’s position on the Japanese living in Hawaii, believing they would assist their ‘homeland’ and work to sabotage the war effort. (pg 102)  Lt. Pelko’s influence on his son is apparent when Adam reacts by wanting the kill Davi, but as hurt and angry as Adam is over the attack on Pearl Harbor and the probable loss of his father, he does come to realize that one cannot assume people are the same simply because they share the similar racial characteristics.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a tragic event; some many lives were lost that day. And they should always be remembered and honored. As Harry Mazer said in his acceptance speech when he was given the 2007 Nēnē award

We need to remember. We need to know our history. The present rests on the words and deeds of those who came before us, their sacrifices and heroism, their foresight and folly. The present, this moment, your moment in time, your actions, your deeds, will influence and shape what is to come. Never forget that.

This is the message I think Mazer wants his readers to realize through his character Adam Pelko.

This book is recommended for readers aged 9-12.
This book is part of my personal library.

A Boy at War received the following well-deserved awards
Children's Literature Choice List
Iowa Teen Award Master List
Nene Award Master List (HI)

There is much information on the internet about Pearl Harbor and about A Boy at War.  Below are a few that might be helpful:
Scholastic has teaching resources at  My Story: Pearl Harbor 
eThemes also has teaching resources at A Boy at War by Harry Mazer
The National Archives has information on President Roosevelt’s speech to congress including an annotated copy of the original typewritten speech at A Date Which Will Live in Infamy
National Geographic has resources on the attack on Pearl Harbor at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/pearlharbor/Remembering Pearl Harbor

I had a teacher in grad school who taught us the value of using a map whenever we read literature in which a place played such an important, as in A Boy at War. This is the one I used while reading.

Pearl Harbor Remembered