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Narrated by John Chancer, Katherine Fenton
Caren B. StelsonUnabridged — 3 hours, 26 minutes
Narrated by John Chancer, Katherine Fenton
Caren B. StelsonUnabridged — 3 hours, 26 minutes
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While the book contains historical notes, informational sidebars, photographs and maps, most of the narrative is Sachiko's account, magnetic and chilling in its simplicity. Stelson lets Sachiko become the hero of her own story; her quiet survival is an inspiring trajectory of redemption…Stelson has created a book that is both personal and universal, both thoroughly researched and real.
08/29/2016
Fifty years after surviving the atomic bombing of Nagasaki as a six-year-old, Sachiko Yasui began to share her story. This moving work of creative nonfiction offers Yasui’s account of life in wartime Japan, the “unspeakable seconds” of the bombing, her family’s struggle to survive, the deaths of her siblings from radiation sickness, her thyroid cancer, and her decades-long struggle to find words as a hibakusha, a survivor of the bombing. Photographs and short essays on topics that include “Racism and War,” “Little Boy and Fat Man” (code names for the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively), and “Long-Term Effects of Radiation” provide illuminating background. Throughout, Stelson highlights defining moments in Yasui’s life, such as her father’s grief over Gandhi’s death, Helen Keller’s visit to Nagasaki, and Yasui’s awareness of nonviolent protests led by Martin Luther King Jr., which influenced her eventual commitment to speak (“Sachiko knew this: the world must never again see nuclear war”). This powerful narrative account of one person finding her voice after insufferable trauma encapsulates a grim era in global history. Ages 10–up. Agent: Rubin Pfeffer, Rubin Pfeffer Content. (Oct.)
Sachiko,” a nonfiction book by Minneapolis writer Caren Stelson, turned up on several 2016 lists, drawing nominations for the National Book Award and the Minnesota Book Award. It’s a slim book with a powerful wallop.
Sachiko Yasui was just 6 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Her first-person account describes the blast and its aftermath, as survivors struggle to find food and water and later die of burns and radiation sickness at overwhelmed hospitals.
Following Japan’s surrender in the war, Sachiko finds herself living in a half-finished house, with classmates who don’t understand her radiation sickness and mock hibakusha or “explosion-affected people.”
As she grows older, Sachiko takes strength from her father’s deep study of Gandhi and a postwar visit to Japan by Helen Keller. “All the world is suffering,” Keller says. “But it’s also full of the overcoming.”
The story’s first-person account and deep sense of humanity offer young readers a chance to grapple with the hard truths of war.
★ 03/01/2017
Gr 5–8—Sachiko Yasui was six years old when an atomic bomb was dropped on her hometown of Nagasaki: this is the account of her survival. She experienced the death of family members, homelessness, and ill health, but the unrelenting encouragement of her father gave her the strength and willpower to face the future. He had told her always to listen to her teachers and never be consumed by hate. Yasui also was influenced by her study of Mohandas Gandhi, Helen Keller, and Martin Luther King Jr. By the 50th anniversary of the bombing, Yasui was ready to speak publicly about surviving the blast and how it impacted her life. Her voice was strong and persuasive. Chapters that recount the story of her life alternate with chapters of historical overview and facts. This is one of the many outstanding aspects of this book. In the audio version, these chapters are read by two different narrators, Katherine Fenton and John Chancer. The vocal differences among the characters are compelling, and Fenton does a superb job with the Japanese pronunciation. VERDICT The organization of this title makes it very practical for use in the classroom. Sure to leave a lasting impression on students. ["Sensitive…well crafted…essential": SLJ 9/16 starred review of the Carolrhoda book.]—Patricia Ann Owens, formerly at Illinois Eastern Community Colleges, Mt. Carmel, IL
★ 09/01/2016
Gr 5–8—Sachiko Yasui was just six years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on her hometown of Nagasaki. On August 9, 1945, she went from playing house with her friends to burying them. Yasui also lost a brother that day and would lose many more family members because of radiation sickness. Growing up, she was ostracized for her status as hibakusha, a bomb survivor. Despite her trauma and the bullying she faced, Yasui endured. She sought out inspiration from the likes of Helen Keller, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. Their works allowed her to make peace with the events in her life. Stelson recounts hearing Yasui speak at a ceremony to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This event would spark a long and intimate process in which Stelson repeatedly met with and interviewed Yasui in order to tell her story. Frequent historical notes provide context to the events happening in the narrative: Japan's role in World War II, the issue of racism in the war, President Truman's ultimatum, the effects of radiation sickness, the U.S. occupation of Japan after the war, and more. Back matter includes a glossary of Japanese terms used in the book and detailed maps of where events took place. VERDICT This sensitive and well-crafted account of a Nagasaki bomb survivor is an essential addition to World War II biography collections for middle school students.—Deidre Winterhalter, Niles Public Library, IL
How do you tell the story of the horrific suffering of an innocent child who grows up to become a hopeful woman? Two narrators use three distinct styles in telling this true story of Sachiko, a child survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bombing. In this third-person account, Katherine Fenton makes a vocal distinction between Sachiko's childhood memories of the bombing and her later life. With youthful innocence, Fenton describes Sachiko’s burning feet, dirt-choked lungs, and other agonies. She utilizes a more matter-of-fact tone for Sachiko’s later reflections. John Chancer is unsentimentally informative as he delivers historical and political background information needed to understand Sachiko's story in the context of world history. An author’s note begins and ends the book. L.T. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
2016-07-20
Books about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for young people are plentiful, but very few focus on the hibakusha, survivors of the bombings, and this important biography notably fills that gap. Sachiko Yasui was 6 when an atomic bomb exploded half a mile from her home in Nagasaki. After briefly describing the impact of the war on Sachiko’s life, Stelson focuses on the immediate aftermath and the years that followed, culminating in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the bombing, when Sachiko began sharing her experiences publicly. The narrative effectively conveys the long-lasting effects of the bombings, including such radiation-related maladies as leukemia and thyroid cancer. Stelson acknowledges that the “necessity” of the atomic bombing to end the war with Japan is debatable. Although Stelson interviewed Sachiko extensively, direct quotes, which would add significant impact to the narrative, are not used, and oddly absent is any sense of Sachiko’s feelings about the bombing. Hibakusha typically speak of the atomic bombings as an important lesson to the world and display a sense of goodwill and understanding rather than animosity or bitterness. There is also no discussion about why the United States bombed Nagasaki so soon after Hiroshima, giving the Japanese so little time to assess and respond to the first attack. An important perspective on the atomic bombings, a controversial decision that continues to provoke passionate debate. (photo, maps, glossary, source notes, bibliography, further reading) (Biography. 12-18)
| BN ID: | 2940175793292 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dreamscape Media |
| Publication date: | 12/06/2016 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
HOME IN NAGASAKI
AUGUST 1945
Six-year-old Sachiko sat on a worn, woven tatami mat and stared at the boiled egg in the middle of the low table.
So did her fourteen-year-old brother Aki, her twelve-year-old brother Ichiro, and her four-year-old sister Misa.
The hen had finally laid an egg.
Sachiko's stomach growled.
Mother bounced two-year-old Toshi on her lap and moved the egg closer to him. Toshi clapped his hands. The egg was his. The egg, when there was one, was always his. Toshi was the youngest.
Sachiko glanced at the egg and then smiled at her little brother. She could wait until dinnertime for her own reward. In the evening, Father would finally come home from a long day building battleships at the Koyagi shipyard. The family would be all together spending as many happy hours with Father as they could.
Steam curled out of Grandmother's bowl in the middle of the low table. Shaped as a large leaf with ruffled edges, the green ceramic bowl was Mother's treasure. Once filled with meals of squid, eel, and octopus, these days Grandmother's bowl had little to offer. Mother ladled small portions of boiled water with wheat balls into cups.
"Eat everything, children. Every drop is precious."
Sachiko sipped her boiled water. No air-raid sirens wailed. No American B-29 bombers flew overhead. Only the cicadas trilled their summer song outside the paper window.
With her last sip of boiled water, Mother hurried out to meet with the tonarigumi, the neighborhood association. Participation in the group was mandatory. Neighborhood leaders organized patriotic events, fire drills in case of bombings, and military training for civilians. They also distributed smaller and smaller amounts of food.
By 1945 no one in Japan had enough to eat. Families added sweet potatoes and soybeans to their near-starvation rations of rice — only two cups per month for each person. A radio broadcast suggested adding silkworm cocoons, grasshoppers, mice, snails, or the dried blood of farm animals to meals for extra protein. The government offered a recipe for flour made from powdered acorns, sweet potato vines, and mulberry leaves. The flour was barely edible.
After Mother left, Ichiro reached for his bamboo net and slipped out of the house to hunt for cicadas. Sachiko's eldest brother, Aki, took charge of the household. He watched over Misa while Sachiko played with Toshi. Sachiko tickled her little brother to make him laugh and gave him pony rides on her shoulders. Toshi was Sachiko's favorite and her responsibility.
Aki switched on the radio. Over the airwaves, a military band struck up the patriotic song "Umi Yukaba." "If I die for the Emperor, it will not be a regret," Aki sang out. He picked up his wooden kamikaze toy glider, circled it above his head, then plunged the plane straight into the tatami mat. "Umi Yukaba," he shouted. "We will win the war."
WORLD WAR II
World War II began in the late 1930s, but the roots of the conflict went back further than that. In Germany, a weak economy and a humiliating defeat in World War I (1914–1918) had created an atmosphere ripe for political extremism. Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in the 1930s as the leader of the Nazi Party. As Germany's dictator, he was determined to create a racially purified German empire that he called the Third Reich.
On September 1, 1939, the German army overran Poland. In response, France and Britain declared war on Germany. In June 1940, Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini sided with Hitler. War engulfed Europe. Reluctant to get involved in a European war, the United States remained neutral. But by early 1941, the United States was supporting countries fighting against the Axis powers of Germany, Italy — and Japan.
In Asia, Japan was a growing industrial power with ambitions to build an empire of its own. An island nation with limited land and natural resources, Japan looked to other Asian countries for oil, rubber, and raw materials to keep its industries and military growing. After wars with China (1894–1895) and Russia (1904–1905), Japan gained territory in Taiwan, Manchuria, and Korea.
In 1926, Emperor Hirohito came to the throne. According to national Japanese mythology, Hirohito was a sacred descendent of the gods. As emperor, Hirohito also was supreme commander of the imperial forces and head of state, although he had no official political power. The prime minister, a close circle of advisers, and the parliament governed the country. Yet as subjects of the emperor, the Japanese people were to give their complete allegiance to Hirohito. As their emperor, Hirohito was above all and held complete authority.
As Japan's military power increased, the nation began building its Asian empire in earnest. In 1937 the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Manchuria, attacked Shanghai, then swept into the ancient city of Nanjing. The army brutally tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese people in those cities.
Needing more oil and rubber for its warships and planes, Japan looked to colonies in Southeast Asia held by the Americans, the British, the French, and the Dutch. To limit Japan's aggression, the United States led an international ban on trade, cutting off three-quarters of Japan's imports and 90 percent of its oil supply. The ban pushed Japan into making a choice: abandon plans for an empire or risk war with the West.
Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo, a former army general, favored war. The only force that could stop Japan's push for a larger empire was the US Pacific Fleet moored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, then a territory of the United States. Gambling that Americans would have little interest in a war in Asia, Tojo made a calculated decision to attack.
The morning of December 7, 1941, 353 Japanese fighter planes, bombers, and torpedo planes bombed the fleet at Pearl Harbor. Within two hours, 2,335 American servicemen were dead, 350 planes were destroyed, and eight battleships demolished or badly damaged. With the Pacific Fleet crippled, Japan expected the strike would weaken Americans' will to fight. Instead, Pearl Harbor became a rallying cry for revenge.
The day after the attack, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on Japan. December 7, 1941, he said, was "a date which will live in infamy." Within three days, Allied powers led by the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union joined together to fight the Axis powers. World War II had become a deadly global war.
The world was at war for four long years. Italy surrendered in October 1943. Germany surrendered in May 1945. Only Japan kept fighting. By the summer of 1945, as the Allies planned a massive sea invasion of Japan, US B-29 bombers were firebombing Japanese cities, one after another, with no plans to stop until Japan surrendered.
RACISM AND WAR
World War II was a conflict over power, politics, people, territory, and resources. But it was also a struggle about race, culture, and ethnicity. Under Hitler's leadership, anti-Semitism, hatred of Jewish people, fueled Germany's genocide of six million European Jews. Millions of Slavs, Roma, political prisoners, homosexuals, and others whom Hitler considered "undesirable" were killed as well. In Japan and the United States, racism also played a divisive role during the war.
Long before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese sentiment existed in the United States, particularly along the Pacific Coast where many Japanese American families lived. In the late 1800s, Asian immigrants, mostly from China and Japan, arrived in the United States, providing cheap labor for agriculture, mining, and industry. As Asian immigration increased, white American prejudice toward Asians intensified. The Immigration Act of 1924 effectively ended immigration from Japan and East Asia and created an atmosphere of systematic discrimination toward Asian people.
In 1941 an estimated 127,000 people of Japanese descent lived along the Pacific coast of the United States. Many of them worked on small farms or ran their own businesses. The bombing of Pearl Harbor added fuel to the existing anti-Japanese sentiments. Fearing that Japanese families in the United States would side with Japan in the war, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The order called for the immediate imprisonment of approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in ten designated US camps. More than half of the incarcerated Japanese — 62 percent — were nisei, or second-generation Japanese people, born in the United States, and therefore American citizens. With Roosevelt's executive order, discrimination against Japanese Americans became official government policy.
As the war raged on, news of brutal battles in the Pacific, torture of US soldiers in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, and the Bataan Death March shocked many Americans. They felt that the Japanese were a less-than-human race with an appetite for cruelty and killing. Racist American political cartoons depicted Japanese people as monkeys or rats wearing glasses and smiling with visibly large buckteeth. During World War II, most Americans viewed Germany's Hitler and his Nazis as the enemy, but hatred for Japan ran deeper. All "Japs" — emperor, soldier, or civilian, were the enemy.
In Japan, racism generated its own brand of prejudice and hate. Taking advantage of anger throughout Asia toward Western colonists, Japan called on all Asians to join together to create an Asian brotherhood. Yet in reality, Japanese military leaders intended Japan to rule over the other Asian nations. The Japanese government encouraged its people to believe in the myths of the Yamato race, the pure Japanese people. Those not of the Japanese race were viewed as inferior. Such beliefs emboldened Japanese soldiers to kill millions of Asians in the name of the empire.
As for white Westerners, the Japanese thought they were cowards, beasts, and monsters. "Kill the American devil," read school posters. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill were depicted as the biggest devils of all.
EVACUATION
MAY-AUGUST 1945
Father must have known the end of the war was near.
By June 1944, when Sachiko was five, the United States had begun bombing Japanese cities with growing regularity. Nagasaki was one of the first cities bombed, although the damage was limited. In February 1945, the United States began firebombing raids over Japan's major cities, including the capital, Tokyo. After the Tokyo raid in March, one hundred thousand people had been killed, one million wounded, and one million left homeless. Then, in April 1945, Nagasaki was attacked again. Three other bombings followed, destroying shipbuilding plants along the Nagasaki harbor. Tension escalated. Japanese combat troops began moving into Kyushu, Nagasaki's home island, preparing for the US invasion that seemed sure to come.
Father made a plan to evacuate his family to a safer place. They would pack up their belongings and take the train to Shimabara, a castle town in the mountains near Nagasaki, where Father had grown up. Sachiko did not want to go. She would miss her home and her friends. Father reassured his daughter. "Sachiko, in Shimabara a house waits for you in the mountains, encircled by pines, with a lake that whispers, 'swim in me.'" Mother filled suitcases with their worn-out clothes and family photos — of Aki and Ichiro as little boys, Mother with friends and relatives surrounded by Father's chrysanthemums from his garden, and five-year-old Sachiko wearing her red-flowered kimono. Before they left, Uncle, Mother's brother — the uncle who loved Sachiko as his own daughter — came to say good-bye. He wrapped his arms around Sachiko's narrow shoulders.
When would she see Uncle again? Sachiko asked. No one could give her an answer.
* * *
The family returned home sooner than anyone expected.
In Shimabara, Father received his red paper, a draft notice from the government, requiring subjects of the emperor to serve in the military. With the coming US invasion, the Japanese government was drafting everyone who could fight, from boys of fifteen to men of sixty. Even unmarried women between the ages of seventeen and forty were called to serve. Father and all other soldiers would be expected to give their lives for the emperor.
Eldest brother Aki spoke first. Father should not return to Nagasaki alone. The family must leave Shimabara and go back together to make as many happy hours with Father as possible. Mother agreed. They would stay together for as long as they could until Father left for war.
* * *
Back home in Nagasaki in August 1945, Sachiko watched the sun dip below the horizon. The sky darkened. The moon rose. Sachiko, Mother, Aki, Ichiro, Misa, and Toshi stepped out onto the front porch and stared into the night, waiting for Father to come home from the shipyard. Aki held a flashlight in his hand.
In the distance, Sachiko pointed to a blink of light — Father's flashlight.
Blink. Blink — Aki's flashlight. Like fireflies longing for each other, light beams flickered and disappeared. Sachiko waited as Father trudged up the hill from the Urakami Station toward home.
* * *
Steam rose from Grandmother's bowl on the low table.
Mother ladled boiled water and wheat balls into cups.
Father, Mother, Aki, Ichiro, Misa, Toshi, and Sachiko pressed their hands together and bowed their heads.
Everyone knew that each day, each night together was precious.
"PROMPT AND UTTER DESTRUCTION"
In the summer of 1945, as Sachiko's father prepared to join the Imperial Japanese Army, Hirohito listened to his advisers and generals argue.
The situation was dire. Japan had lost the air and sea wars to the Allies. Its military forces throughout its Asian empire had been defeated. Sixty-four cities on the home islands had been destroyed. More than two million Japanese soldiers and civilians had already died. How many more would perish if the Allies invaded? The options were starkly clear. Surrender unconditionally to the Americans, as they had demanded, and risk giving up the emperor's throne. Reach out to the Soviet Union, a country still neutral with Japan, and try to negotiate a conditional surrender that would keep the emperor on the throne. Or fight to the end and risk the nation's utter defeat. The emperor, the person who would decide his people's fate, remained silent.
By that summer, Roosevelt had died after suffering a massive stroke. In Washington, DC, Harry Truman was the new president. He listened as his advisers and generals debated strategies to defeat Japan. Operation Downfall, the Allied invasion of Japan, was still in the planning stage. If the invasion went ahead, it would be the largest seaborne invasion in history. Truman wanted to know how many American casualties could be expected. Perhaps thirty-one thousand dead, wounded, or missing? Probably more. No one could accurately predict the number. Would the invasion be worth the cost of so many American lives? With Japan on the verge of collapse, advisers wavered. Support for Operation Downfall began to fade.
Could the United States soften its demand for an unconditional surrender and let the emperor stay on his throne? Would that end the war? Truman's advisers argued these questions. But Truman knew the American public wanted a total and unconditional defeat of Japan.
And what of the Soviet Union? The Soviet Union had fought with the Allies against Germany but had remained neutral toward Japan. However, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, had promised to go to war with Japan after Germany surrendered. Would a Soviet invasion hasten the end of the war? No doubt. But Truman didn't trust Stalin. He worried Stalin would want to control Japan and other territories in Asia after the war.
Lastly, Truman and his advisers discussed using the atomic bomb to help end the war. The bomb had recently been developed, but it had not yet been tested. Truman and his advisers hoped the upcoming test would succeed, but no one thought the atomic bomb could be an all-powerful weapon to end the war by itself.
As Truman's advisers debated, a committee formed to identify Japanese cities as potential atomic bomb targets. To demonstrate the bomb's destructive power and to terrify Japanese citizens, the target city could not have been firebombed. Yet most of Japan's cities had, indeed, been firebombed. All the same, the military identified seventeen cities as possible targets. The final list named four: Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki, and Niigata.
Excerpted from Sachiko by Caren B. Stelson. Copyright © 2016 Caren Stelson. Excerpted by permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc..
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