Weedflower

Summer has begun and I have nothing to do! This is one of the many books from my backlist that I need to review. I will make sure to make time to do all of them and get in at least a good twenty more posts to hopefully reach my goal of 60 posts when school starts.
This is a historical fiction book about the Japanese internment camps in World War II. There was mass hysteria following the attacks on Pearl Harbor, so all of the Japanese immigrants and even second generation Japanese in California were rounded up into large internment camps so that the Americans could make sure there were no spies among them. Many hundreds of thousands were put in those camps, but no one was convicted.
This is the tale of a young, innocent girl caught in a time of hysteria without even knowing what was going on around her.

The cover-

Sumiko loves her life on her family's carnation farm. It's the one place she loves more than anywhere else and wishes she could stay there forever, picking carnations to sell in the market. That is, until her family is sent to an internment camp where it will be made sure that they are not spies gathering information for the Japanese military.

At the internment camp, Sumiko has many new experiences, including horrible weather and conditions, not finding enough food to eat and having to find out what to do in the long hours that they wait as they lay captive in the Arizona camp. The experience of her life is the Native American boy Frank who comes to visit her and constantly complains that the camp was built on his tribe's land.

Throughout the months that she lives through the torture, Sumiko realizes what the real situation is all around her and that in times of hardship, it is always best to forget the bad and cherish the good. You may never know when you'll see it again.

My thoughts-

The way that I would sum it up is that Sumiko is an innocent girl caught in the middle of a crisis she did not want to be a part of. She's just an innocent girl caught in the crosshairs of a panicked country. The way her personality goes, she would have enjoyed living her life with her aunt and uncle on their carnation farm for the rest of her life with Takao, Bull, Ichiro and the rest of her family. 

I found it interesting that she was able to manage herself so well even when she had almost nothing. Sumiko found an envelope of seeds and brought them with her to possibly grow if she could find a place cool enough to ensure that they survive. Within a few weeks of going there, she found a man who liked gardening as much as she did at their camp and helped him start a vegetable garden where she also began to plant her special "Sumiko Strain" of stock from the envelope.

My thoughts on her character is that Sumiko is an extremely optimistic girl who likes to keep herself busy, whether playing with friends or tending to her plants. She is also extremely versatile like the plants she grows in the way that she pushed her homesickness to the back of her head and tried to enjoy as much as she could knowing that she was going to be stuck in the internment camp for who knew how long.

I think that a person like Sumiko is how we should all strive to be. She always knows what is right and wants what is best for herself and the ones she loves. Sumiko is also able to adjust to new places and make the best out of them. I think even in her time of hardship, she was able to make the most out of everything around her, knowing that she wasn't really wanted anywhere because of her heritage. I think that it would do all of us good to be like Sumiko a little bit. She is the kind of strong girl I know I would want to be. Just like the carnations she cultivates.

((I have new books to review! I hope to update soon now that the summer has begun and there is no more school! I will catch up on reviews too! Happy Reading!))