num_pages: 216
description: The harsh conditions of an internment camp become a reality for a young Japanese-Canadian girl.It is 1941 and Mary Kobayashi a Canadian-born Japanese girl enjoys her life in Vancouver. She likes school she likes her friends and she yearns above all else to own a bicycle. Although WWII is raging elsewhere in the world it hasnt really impacted her life in B.C.Then on December 7 1941 Japan bombs Pearl Harborand everything changes.Suddenly a war of suspicion and prejudice is waged on the home front and Japanese-Canadians are completely stripped of their rights their jobs and their homes. Mary is terrified when her family is torn apart and sent to various work camps while she and her two sisters are sent alone to a primitive camp in B.C.s interior. Here Mary spends the duration of the war scared and uncertain of how it will all end.In Torn Apart author Susan Aihoshi draws from the experiences of her own family during The Uprooting of the Japanese in B.C. during WWII. Through young Marys eyes readers experience this regrettable time in Canadian history firsthand.
language: English
title: Torn Apart: The Internment Diary of Mary Kobayashi
publisher: Scholastic Canada