Paper Wishes

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.