Cherry Blossom Baseball (24 page)
Read Cherry Blossom Baseball Online
Authors: Jennifer Maruno
When the Cherry Blossoms Fell
Short-listed for the 2012 Pacific Northwest Young Readers Choice Award and for the 2011 Hackmatack Children's Choice Award.
Nine-year-old Michiko Minagawa bids her father good-bye before her birthday celebration. She doesn't know the government has ordered all Japanese-born men out of the province. Ten days later, her family joins hundreds of Japanese-Canadians on a train to the interior of British Columbia. Even though her aunt Sadie jokes about it, they have truly reached the “Land of No.” There are no paved roads, no streetlights, and no streetcars. The house in which they are to live is dirty and drafty. At school Michiko learns the truth of her situation. She must face local prejudice, the worst winter in forty years and her first Christmas without her father.
Cherry Blossom Winter
Ten-year-old Michiko wants to be proud of her Japanese heritage but can't be.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, her family's possessions are confiscated and they are forced into deprivation in a small, insular community. The men are sent to work on the railway, so the women and children are left to make the trip on their own. After a former Asahi baseball star becomes her new teacher, life gets better. Baseball fever hits town, and when Michiko challenges the adults to a game with her class, the whole town turns out.
Then the government announces that they must move once again. But they can't think of relocating with a new baby coming, even with the offer of free passage to Japan. Michiko pretends to be her mother and writes to get a job for her father on a farm in Ontario. When he is accepted, they again pack their belongings and head to a new life in Ontario.
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Copyright © Jennifer Maruno, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
All characters in this work are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Editor: Allister Thompson Design: Laura Boyle
Composite image and cover design: Laura Boyle
Cover images: © KPG_Payless/shutterstock.com (girl); Blossom image © Elizabeth Bernstein/Dreamstime.com
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Maruno, Jennifer 1950-, author
Cherry blossom baseball : a cherry blossom book / Jennifer Maruno., author
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-3166-0 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3167-7 (pdf).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3168-4 (epub)
1. Japanese Canadians--Evacuation and relocation, 1942-1945--Juvenile fiction. I. Title.
PS8626.A785C537 2015 jC813'.6 C2015-902195-2
C2015-902196-0
We acknowledge the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Canada Book Fund
and
Livres Canada Books
, and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit
and the
Ontario Media Development Corporation
.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
The publisher is not responsible for websites or their content unless they are owned by the publisher.
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