The Importance of Both Personal and Collective Memory

Throughout the novel, Japanese internment as well as the Japanese immigrant experience has resulted in the lack of a shared history among descendents of first and second generation immigrants. This has direct, practical consequences for the fictional Kiku, but it also has less significant effects for the future.

One symbol of this collective and family memory is the violin trinket Ernestina receives while in the camp. Kiku has seen this trinket throughout her whole life because it is on display in her family home. Still, she never really knew the history of it. When she is in the camp, she is given her own trinket, and in the box of trinkets, she sees the one that is about to be given to her grandmother. While it has always been a part of her history to a small degree because...