A Shrug of the Shoulders

by Elaine Cockrell

During World War II, xenophobia peaks as Japanese Americans are interned in Western US states. George Yano and his mother, sister, and brothers succumb to this they are forced to abandon their farmland in Central Washington and must relocate to a Portland, Oregon assembly center. While the Yanos scrabble for normalcy—pickup baseball games for the boys, homey touches in the family's cramped private quarters—George becomes a recruiter of Japanese ancestry workers for Eastern Oregon's sugar beet fields. While George charts a course for the Yanos through financial ruin, racism, and hardship, Molly Mita does the same for her family. As Molly and George grow closer, so too do their families.

In a rich novel spanning Portland's assembly center, farming communities in Eastern Oregon, and internment camps like Minidoka in Idaho, A Shrug of the Shoulders renders the Yanos’ and Mitas’ lives with care, hope, and historical fidelity. Through multiple points of view and dozens of vivid settings, author Elaine Cockrell creates a mosaic of Japanese-American one tiled with humor, frustration, despair, anger, and love.

Praise for A Shrug of the

"Elaine Cockrell's novel A Shrug of the Shoulders does readers a service by rendering in dramatic terms the era of Japanese-American relocation that unfolded during World War II. I'm glad to see it in print, because it serves as a reminder of this period in our history and therefore increases the odds that we will not allow ourselves again, as a nation, to act on prejudice." --David Guterson, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of Snow Falling on Cedars

"Here is a new vision of Oregon showcasing a people’s capacity to grow, change and treat each other with kindness despite the trauma they lived through. A Shrug of the Shoulders is a singular perspective of Japanese Americans making a new world out of a shattered one. I didn’t want this story to end." --Jane Kirkpatrick, award-winning author of The Healing of Natalie Curtis

"After exhaustive research, Elaine Cockrell takes readers into the thickets of American shame—the internment of Japanese-American citizens in World War II. Against this dark backdrop, Cockrell finds the shining stars of the human spirit that can't be dimmed by fear. The result is an uplifting story built of love and war, life and death, honor and ignorance. It is a story told through individuals and families of the Pacific Northwest who struggled while being exiles in their own country but refused to return such evil with evil." --Bob Welch, author of Saving My How Two WWII Soldiers Fought Against Each Other and Later Forged a Friendship That Saved Their Lives

"It speaks to the power of Cockrell’s writing that we as readers feel the anger, the humiliation, and the humanity of the main characters. We cringe at the casual prejudice and discrimination George and his family experience; we sigh with relief, grateful when they are treated with dignity, decency, and fairness on the Allen brothers’ farm." --Alan Rose, Columbia River Reader

"A Shrug of the Shoulders paints a vivid picture of WWII’s internment of Japanese Americans in Eastern Oregon. Elaine Cockrell skillfully intertwines the lives of three families—two of Japanese ancestry—into a compelling story of the conflicting circumstances, emotions, viewpoints and prejudices of those touched by the internments and displacements. Cockrell’s research shines through, allowing the reader to feel the devastation, persistence and rebirth of the affected Japanese Americans and the resulting effect on the non-Japanese in the community.

Genres: Historical Fiction

419 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 10, 2022

Reviews

[James Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is about various people that have to go through the internment process during World War II in the U.S. They include George and Abe, who don't get along well at all, Chiharu, their mother, Thomas, Molly and a bunch of others.

It covers the exclusion orders, how people dealt with that, rumors about sabotage, the Portland Assembly Center and how the main characters dealt with being there and the decision to try to get interned persons of Japanese ancestry to help out white farmers.

That part of stories like this is always kind of hard to figure out. Here you lock people up without charges or a trial, you force the people to sell their homes and businesses at a tremendous loss, you end up putting the people in camps that are surrounded by guard towers with armed guards and you still expect them to volunteer to help out white farmers with their crops.

Then there are things like putting barriers around the latrines so people could have at least a little privacy, a perforated appendix, the putting of blacks and Nisei in segregated military units, blacks having to sit in the back of buses, training in Japanese to help interrogate Japanese prisoners, an attempted rape at a school by a major bully, a sheriff that won't do his job if it involves the PJAs and what ends up happening to the various people in the story.

The whole thing is done very well, very realistically and with characters that are interesting and believable.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent fictional book about some Japanese families on the West Coast (specifically OR and WA) who were sent to internment camps during WW2. You really got to know the characters and felt like you were right there with them. One family lived and worked in rural Malheur County in eastern OR, and dealt with rampant prejudice living in that community. Despite the situation, many parts were heartwarming as it showed how people can make community where it is needed, even under great difficulty.

[Gary Denton · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A Shrug of the Shoulders" is a must read for those unfamiliar with the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Elaine Cockrell, through three fictional families, has rendered a realistic and approachable picture of what it was like to live in a land suddenly stripped of rights, property, and freedom. Bravo to this author for doing exhaustive research and fictionalizing it without stripping away the truth.

[Trudi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book. I so much enjoyed the writing of Elaine. I was hoping there would be more, but I don’t see any other than this one. We met Elaine on a trip last fall. I found the subject matter fascinating.