Structure

The graphic memoir is centered around Takei's memories of being forced to live in an internment camp as a child during World War II. Thus it is largely a linear narrative that begins when Takei is five years old and his family is driven from their Los Angeles home and sent to a temporary facility at the Santa Anita racetrack, and then to Camp Rohwer in Arkansas. From Rohwer, the family was sent to Camp Tule Lake in California after Takei's parents refused to sign an oath of loyalty to the United States. The memoir reaches its climax when the war ends and the Takeis are left with an uncertain future because George's mother Fumiko renounced her citizenship and the internees were unsure if life outside the barbed wire fences that held them would be safe for people of Japanese descent. In the plot's falling action post-climax...