55 pages • 1-hour read
Paper Wishes
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Themes
The Problem of Unjust Persecution
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.
Paper Wishes is the story of one specific child and her family, but it is also the story of the Japanese Americans of the West Coast during the World War II era. It reveals how the confinement of ordinary people in concentration camps was both unnecessary and cruel, exposing the problem of unjust persecution.
The novel’s first chapter makes it clear what harmless, innocent people the Tanakas are. They live a modest life on Bainbridge Island, Washington. They love the ocean, their dog, one another, and their community. Nevertheless, their lives are disrupted suddenly and without clear justification when soldiers arrive, announcing that all of the local Japanese American families must leave their homes. Manami cannot understand what is happening or why. She points out to Grandfather that “only [her] face and [her] name are Japanese” and “the rest of [her] is American” (4). It is clear that the larger Bainbridge Island community agrees with Manami: Several characters who have no Japanese ancestry express sorrow and anger about what is happening to their Japanese American friends and neighbors. In these ways, Chapter 1 repeatedly emphasizes how unnecessary and unjust the imprisonment of West Coast Japanese Americans like the Tanakas really is.
For Manami, the cruelest blow is the loss of Yujiin, but all of the community members suffer in one way or another. The Bainbridge Islanders’ lives revolve around the ocean, and they are imprisoned in the desert. They are used to a temperate climate, not the harsh extremes of Manzanar. They are used to the comfortable homes and familiar routines they have worked hard to create, but in Manzanar, they are crowded into rudimentary barracks and expected to live according to the camp’s strict routines and regulations. Both Mother and Mrs. Soto are depicted crying over the conditions at the camp on their first day there, and Manami mentions how many of her community members are shocked and dismayed by their first encounter with Manzanar.
As more and more people from other communities are crowded into the camp, it also becomes a more frightening place. Factions develop and whispers of discontent finally erupt into rioting and rebellion. Ron’s arrest encapsulates what is so unjust and callous about the government’s treatment of Japanese Americans in this era. Ron has done nothing against the rules of Manzanar—in fact, he has actively tried to dissuade the boys in his class from fomenting a rebellion. Ron is consistently self-sacrificing and community-minded, taking a job teaching and even spending his own money to try to keep young people out of trouble. Nevertheless, Ron is targeted by the warden and arrested. Once he is targeted by the warden, he becomes a target for the agitators’ violence, and for his own safety he is removed to Idaho, separating him from his family.
Ron’s story is a miniature version of the larger story of all of the West Coast Japanese Americans of the era: For no good reason, they are targeted by the government, cruelly uprooted from everything they have known, and made prisoners of the state. The novel thus condemns such acts of unjust persecution, showing how such inhumane treatment has real, serious costs to the victims involved.
The Importance of Resilience and Adaptation
The story of Manami and her family demonstrates the strength and determination required to persevere in the face of injustice. When they are incarcerated at Manzanar simply for being of Japanese descent, the Tanakas lose their home, their way of life, and their much-loved dog, Yujiin. Initially, they are stunned and sad, but gradually they learn how to adapt despite the hardships. In various ways, the novel emphasizes the importance of resilience and adaptation.
Manami, at 10 years old, cannot fully understand what is happening. She feels as if the dust of Manzanar is choking her, and she draws images of water in the dirt outside her family’s barracks. Once she has access to pencil and paper, she draws images of home, and she draws Yujiin over and over, sending the pictures of her dog off into the wind as missives to her lost pet. Grandfather mourns the loss of Yujiin and the ocean, too: He sits in or near their barracks all day, refusing to go to the mess hall and eating only small amounts of the food his daughter and granddaughter bring him. Mother weeps when she first sees Manzanar.
It is Father who first points the way toward recovery. Soon after the family’s arrival at the desolate camp, he announces that they will work to turn it into a village, something more like a home. Mother takes her cue from this and immediately springs into action, tidying, organizing, and planting a garden. Both show quick resilience and a determination to adapt to the hostile new environment. Father takes a job on the building crew, and Mother takes a job as a camp cook. They devote themselves to making as comfortable and familiar a life as possible for the family. This demonstrates how love and family bonds motivate people and give them the strength to adapt and bounce back from adversity.
Grandfather and Manami, however, are slower to adapt. Grandfather and Manami are especially affected by the loss of Yujiin because they both found their purpose in caring for the little dog. In Chapter 5, when Manami comes to Grandfather weeping about Yujiin, tending to his granddaughter’s pain gives Grandfather a new kind of purpose. He comforts Manami and then walks her to school, just as he used to do on the island. That evening, he finally joins the family for dinner in the mess hall, which begins his own process of recovery.
Similarly, Manami gradually finds ways to express her caring nature even in a concentration camp. Mother wisely gives her the job of tending the garden, and in Chapter 4, Manami shows how seriously she takes this task when she goes to extreme lengths to save the young plants during the rainstorm. When Seal becomes a part of Manami’s life late in the story, taking care of her new dog becomes an important purpose for Manami. Her love for Seal becomes the catalyst for her recovery.
Although each family member takes a slightly different path in coping with their unjust incarceration, when they make the difficult choice to start over again in Idaho they prove that they have all recovered their hope and belief in a better future.
The Emotional and Psychological Effects of Imprisonment on Children
Due to her age, Manami is unable to fully understand what is happening to her family and does not know how to cope with the intense emotions her experiences engender. Through Manami’s experiences, the novel examines the emotional and psychological effects of imprisonment on children.
In Chapter 1, Manami is the picture of innocence. She walks on the beach with her grandfather, worrying that if she takes her shoes off, it will upset her mother. She enthuses over the antics of her dog, over her mother’s cooking, and her best friend at school. She is helpful around the house and shares her deep love for her family. The juxtaposition of this picture of innocent childhood with the events of Chapter 2, in which Manami is separated from Yujiin and becomes a prisoner in a concentration camp, makes it clear how brutal the imprisonment of Japanese American children is. Manami’s emotional and psychological torment is conveyed through the loss of her voice. For months, she is unable to speak.
The narrative emphasizes Manami’s youth over and over. Her magical thinking regarding the letters to Ron and Keiko and her letters to Yujiin all reinforce that the cruelties of incarceration are doubly unjust when it comes to the child prisoners at Manzanar. Her naïve belief that her siblings could rescue her, or that Yujiin could return to her, convey the depths of longing she feels for her old life. Her sorrows and frustrations sometimes manifest in physical symptoms, leaving her tired and struggling to eat.
Manami also notices how strange it is that Japanese American children have been singled out in a way that other groups have not, which aggravates her sense of isolation and hopelessness. She considers this point on her first day of school, when she spends much of the day puzzling over why she is a prisoner while the white children of the camp workers are free to come and go from Manzanar as they please: “The children in that block do not have to stay inside a wire fence. They can leave to go shopping or see a movie” (58). That Manami is denied these simple childhood pleasures while she sees other children enjoying them is painful and confusing for her.
Throughout the story, she struggles to understand and cope with her feelings. What she has been through is too big and too confusing for words, and at first she can only draw small fragments of what she is thinking. Her long path to recovery makes it clear how particularly cruel what happened to the children of Manzanar really was, emphasizing how the emotional and psychological effects of persecution and imprisonment can leave deep scars in a child’s psyche.
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