Summary

Chapter 1 opens with Hanako admitting she does not know much about old people, other than the fact that she had to be polite. Her mother's parents were dead and her father's parents live in Japan. Hanako's parents, Tadashi and Kagako, are Japanese but have taught her how important it is to be American. Now, however, the family is returning to Japan and Hanako is trying to learn to be “more Japanese.” Her thoughts are interrupted by her brother, Akira, asking if she has more candy. He has thick hair with “a big wine stain covering the skin around his right eye and beyond, like a pirate's patch” (Location 16). She produces a piece of butterscotch they had bought at Tule Lake, California, where the family was held in a prison camp. Her family had been in three camps, each horrible in its own way...