STANLEY HAYAMI

by Joanne Oppenheim, Stanley Hayami

The Japanese government attacked the US Pacific fleet in Hawaii on 7 December 1941. On the following day the US declared war on Japan and for those of Japanese decent, most of whom were American Citizens, life would never be the same. This book focuses on a dark time in our history.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

225 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2008

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book / journal / diary goes into the daily life of internment for the Hayami family and added commentary from the author. What was sad was that Stanley seemed destined for “greatness” and was a visionary, someone ahead of his time and unfortunately a casualty of the war. That section was almost a tear jerker moment. But still a good read if you want to know more about the injustice done to the Japanese Americans.

[Gin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stanley Hayami, if he had lived, would have gone on to do great things, perhaps as a renowned artist. His drawings are really good, and pointed to a future where illustration would be part of his work. His diary entries too painted a boy full of hopes and dreams with an abundance of talent, but was tragically cut short by his death in the dying days of the European Theatre of Operations.

The reader really gets to know him, as well as his family and friends. At the same time, we get to see from first hand what it is like to be de facto prisoner in one of the internment camps. This is aided by the extensive annotation done by Joanne Oppenheim that helped to provide background context to each entries. This was also supplemented with the extensive endnotes at the end.

The last couple of pages when Stan’s family received notice of his death was the hardest part to read. Knowing that the war was only a few days shy of being over, I could not help but wonder how unlucky he was, but also how absolutely brave he and his comrades in the 442 were. That story of the 442 I am familiar with, but Joanne Oppenheim also included in enough information and background to them in the annotation.

This has been a great read, and I felt like I got to know this boy Stanley Kunio Hayami personally. It’s simply tragic how his young life was cut short, and reminds me too that there were many many others like him as well.