The Journal of Ben Uchida: Citizen 13559, Mirror Lake Internment Camp

The Journal of Ben Uchida: Citizen 13559, Mirror Lake Internment Camp | Barry Denenberg | The Journal Of Ben Uchida

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The Journal of Ben...

	The Journal of Ben Uchida: Citizen 13559, Mirror Lake Internment Camp Barry Denenberg Scholastic Inc., 1999 - 157 pages average customer review:based on 30 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Heartbreaking and humorous, this is the story of a twelve-year-old prisoner in one of America's Japanese internment camps of World War II.

AGSamantha from Cutchogue by Mary

"The Christmas that never was!" {Says my sister}. All because of Pearl Harbor, this happened. The story starts in April in 1942 and retraces back to December right about the time of the Pearl Harbor disaster. It gives you a full recount of the disaster.

Journal of Ben Uchida: Citizen 13559 Mirror Lake Internment Camp. {By: Barry Denenberg} is a great book for historical fiction fans. It's also a great book to tell you what life was like in the Internment Camps during the period of time after Pearl Harbor happened. The author has a superb way of giving details about people, places, and things. Barry has a way of making you feel your actually there.

The theme of this book is: what life was like for a Japanese child in California after Pearl Harbor happened. Another is that if you were in an internment camp, then you didn't know where you were or where you would go, you were just told to get on a train with the belongings you could carry. You also had to share an apartment with another family and the apartment wasn't that big. You had to stand in line for everything like take a shower and get your food. Is the kind of life you want to live? I don't think so.

So if you like World War 2 books this is a good book for you. It has mystery, friendship, and adventure. All the things a book in diary form and even any book should require. It also has some cliffhangers after some diary entries and you are always wondering what is going to happen next. To me it is a very good book.

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The Journal Of Ben Uchida

This book called the Journal of Ben Uchida is based on a true story and talks about Ben Uchida, who is a prisoner of war basically in a detainee camp called Mirror Lake in the middle of nowhere near San Francisco. Throughout the book he is faced by many problems about what he is to do about the situation and how he should handle things. Some basic things he did not notice before, he now cherishes them for all they are worth. As the story progresses Ben makes new friends and enemies as well. One of the friends (or so it turns out) he made was Mike Masuda. He seemed nice at the start was very caring for them and even started a baseball league inside their camp area, but later on in the story there comes a point when he just snaps and is unkind to everyone else. At the end of the book many of the characters end up dieing in a miserable death, but Ben lives on to tell the story.

I think the theme of this story is that even through hard times, you need to stand up for yourself and sometimes when life doesn't go your way you need to just wing it. The thing that drew me to this book the most was that just the thought of being stuck in an imprisonment camp along with all of your kind being disgraced and the government agrees with all the criticism, everything in your world would get turned upside down. Also according to this book, it was actually based on a true story! In the epilogue, Toyo Miyatake who took the pictures for the book did an excellent job of the visuals along with the story.

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Many people feel sorry for the Japanese Americans that were treated miserably, but they couldn't begin to imagine what they went through. Ben Uchida and his family knew exactly what the experience was like. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ben feared for his family knowing that the government would automatically point fingers at the Japanese Americans as being spies. The United States government thought it best to take innocent families away from their safe homes and quiet neighborhoods to very dirty and crowded interment camps. The Uchida family and his family were sent to Mirror Lake along with many families. They tiring journey began on a filthy, stained train to the middle of nowhere. Then they were greeted by the military forcing them off the train leaving there bags and things on the train. To make this day better, they realize that they must share an already too small room with another family. Mirror Lake was the name off the internment camp. After months, and months of living a terrible, miserable life, they are released and apologized to. Ben and his family were taken home only to find their house burned to the ground by angry neighbors. The My Name is America series is an excellent series to read if you enjoy to actually get inside the heads of the characters. The Journal of Ben Uchida is a great example of this.
This is a great book because it involves many detailed events and settings. The room in which the Uchida family had to share with another family was described in depth from the cots filled with not enough sheets to the tiny range with the dangerous stove. The neighborhood that the Uchida lived in first was described incredibly as a nice neighborhood filled with many kids. The cafeteria at Mirror Lake was always occupied with a line that reached from one end to the other and most of the time trailing out the door. It also didn't have as many tables as were needed, or at least that was what it was described like.
The Journal of Ben Uchida is a great book that gets you into the heads of the characters no matter what stand point you're in. First, you get into Ben's head. He is the one writing the journal. The author described his feelings just as a little brother would feel like. You also get into Robbie's, Ben's friend back home, head. He constantly writes Ben asking him questions like hows it going, are you playing any baseball, etc. He asks questions that many boys would wonder if their friend was forced to leave without their total consent, even if most of them are blacked out in the mail by the military. The reader also gets into the thoughts of the administration. They see how they are trying to make the best of a tough situation. The administration is doing their job, and well, but their is evidence that they are trying there best to let the people have a little freedom by doing things like starting a paper, starting a baseball league, etc.
This book is clearly a great example of a real life journal from the 1940's. It is in the format of a real diary with dates at the top of each entry. It also has the real feelings of a kid living in that time. Ben has a real personality. It does not seem like an imaginary one. Ben has hate (toward bullies at home), friendship (towards Robbie and Mike), concern (toward his family and all Japanese Americans), and many other similar feelings. This book also has real historical facts from the attack on Pearl Harbor, to the internment camps, to the repent.
There were people like Ben and his family in that time frame that felt the same way. This book is a good example of the life a Japanese American went through. Many people feel empathy for these poor people without really knowing what they went through or felt, but this book helps us see it and feel it. When ever a reader would like to go back in time and experience the pain and suffering that these innocent people went through, just open this book. Barry Denenberg did an excellent job portraying the life in the time of the 1940's. A. Elliott

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Journal Of Ben Uchida

The book The Journal of Ben Uchida by Barry Denenberg is about a boy named Ben Uchida who lives in San Francisco, California in the year 1942. Ben Uchida was a normal kid 13 year-old until the bombing of Pearl Harbor and everything changed, everyone around him started treating him different because he was Japanese. This is the story of Ben and his family having to go to a concentration camp and finding out about everything that is going to happen during his stay and everything that is wrong about.

I recommend to young adults because it tells you what it was like to be that age back when people were being treated unfairly and it is in the point of view of a young adult.

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Internment Camp Diary

Ben was twelve, living a pretty normal life as a Japanese-American in California when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Immediately his life became anything but normal. His parents, fearing what would happen to them, began by burning anything that had anything to do with Japan, including Ben's sister's dolls, books, and letters from their grandparents in Japan. Even these precautions didn't help them much, though. Ben's father, an optometrist who belonged to an association for Japanese American businessmen, was taken away by the government for questioning. His family had no idea when he would return, and most of his letters were blacked out for national security reasons. Then Ben and his sister and his mother were told that they would have to pack up and go somewhere to live for the rest of the war. They were told it was for their own protection.

Ben's mother sold everything she could manage and put the rest of their belongings into storage, and she and her children boarded a train that took them out into the middle of nowhere, to a camp called Mirror Lake. In fact, there was no lake. It was a dusty group of wooden houses, thown together and poorly made, in the middle of the desert. The camp was surrounded by barbed wire, electric fences, and guard towers. This is where thousands of people were to live until the war was over and any danger was past.

Ben and his family live in this internment camp for over a year, sharing a one-room apartment with another family and waiting in long lines for everything--meals, showers, toilets, and anything else they need. When they are finally able to return home, they find things there aren't so great, either.

I liked the first-person account of the hardship faced in these camps. I also liked that Ben's best friend kept writing him letters to keep him updated on how things were on the outside.

It was infuriating to read this book about the internment camps and to think that the rest of the country just allowed this to happen, instead of being outraged about it.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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