Overview

"A World War II homefront action that many Americans would like to forget." — Kirkus Reviews

“This cinematic and propulsive family saga casts a riveting spotlight on an ignominious episode in U.S. history.” — Publishers Weekly

On a late March morning in the spring of 1942, Elaine Yoneda awoke to a series of terrible choices: between her family and freedom, her country and conscience, and her son and daughter. 

She was the child of Russian Jewish immigrants and the wife of a Japanese American man. On this war-torn morning, she was also a mother desperate to keep her young mixed-race son from being sent to a US concentration camp. Manzanar, near Death Valley, was one of ten detention centers where our government would eventually imprison every person of Japanese descent along the West Coast—alien and citizen, old and young, healthy and sick—or, in the words of one official, anyone with even “one drop” of Japanese blood. 

Elaine’s husband Karl was already in Manzanar, but he planned to enlist as soon as the US Army would take him. The Yonedas were prominent labor and antifascist activists, and Karl was committed to fighting for what they had long cherished: equality, freedom, and democracy. 

Yet when Karl went to war, their son Tommy, three years old and chronically ill, would be left alone in Manzanar—unless Elaine convinced the US government to imprison her as well. 

The consequences of Elaine’s choice did not end there: if she somehow found a way to force herself behind barbed wire with her husband and son, she would leave behind her white daughter from a previous marriage.

Together in Manzanar tells the story of these painful choices and conflicting loyalties, the upheaval and violence that followed, and the Yonedas’ quest to survive with their children’s lives intact and their family safe and whole.

Reviews

“A World War II homefront action that many Americans would like to forget." — Kirkus Reviews

“This cinematic and propulsive family saga casts a riveting spotlight on an ignominious episode in U.S. history.” — Publishers Weekly

“Slater is acutely sensitive to the emotions and motivations of the people she describes, as well as to the larger issues of justice, race, and government accountability. Her account of prejudice, the abuse of power, and the rationalizations used to justify them, is as relevant today as ever. Slater’s natural empathy and sharp observations make this historical account a sensitive, affecting human story as well.” — Jewish Book Council

“The parallels to today’s political divisiveness, the scapegoating of immigrants, separation of families and setting aside the rule of law are all too self-evident.” — Asian Review of Books

“Tracy Slater has done her homework and is uniquely positioned to tell the story of Elaine Yoneda, an eyewitness to one of the most explosive parts of the wartime Japanese American experience. With dramatic flair, Slater captures the untold story of a high-profile mixed-race couple inside an American concentration camp at a pivotal moment in history.” —Frank Abe, coeditor of The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration

Author Biography