Thin Wood Walls

“But I was drawn to the whispers as a moth is drawn to a candle flame, seeking the light, suffering the heat. The more I learned, the hotter the world seemed, the darker.”

Patneaude uses a simile, where one thing is compared to another using “like” or “as.” He emphasizes Joe’s curiosity and knowledge that being left out of a serious conversation implies trouble. The image of heat coming off the candle captures the trouble coming Joe’s way. He’s curious, but he also wants to avoid danger.

“Mom said nothing. Had she argued inside the house? I wanted to think so, even though the chief said arguing was a waste of breath. Dad was worth an argument, no matter what.”

Patneaude develops his message that people must speak up for one another. These lines relate to Joe’s father’s arrest, but it is also a more universal message. When Japanese Americans are incarcerated in detention camps, not enough people spoke up in their defense. On an individual and societal basis, people are worth standing up for, even when authorities imply that standing up for people is useless.

“Writing was often easy for me, and fun. I loved to let my ideas overflow into whirlpools of words that I could sort out on paper. This writing would be different, though. This writing would not be easy, or fun. But I needed to try.”

Joe’s identity as a writer is important. It implies that he is observant, expressive, and introspective. Now that his life has become difficult, writing is more important than ever. Writing is an act of bearing witness to xenophobia and the atrocities of imprisonment, as well as a way to reclaim his voice.

“The way the class divided up at recess was different: brown and white instead of swirls of both. Only Ray and I stood together, pretending things were the same.”

The racial division at recess bodes ominously. It demonstrates that children all too easily adopt the racism of their society. In mimicking scapegoating, Joe’s peers highlight the need for schools to act as a place where children learn empathy, compassion, and history.

“Suddenly I felt like a character inside one of the stories I had written—good guys, bad guys, bad stuff happening. I didn’t like the feeling.”

Joe characterizes himself as a subject in a sad story. His childhood has been good, and he’s only experimented with the idea of “badness” through his fictions. Now, fiction has become reality. Joe is out of control of the new story of his life, disturbing his sense of self.

“Being in on the adult conversation wasn’t what I’d pictured. They talked about bad things, scary things, but no one could tell me what was going to happen, no one asked for my opinions. I knew Mom didn’t think I should be included.”

Patneaude shows how societal issues like war, xenophobia, and racism rob young people of their childhood. In his perilous new reality, Joe has access to adult conversations. He is doubly powerless as a child and victim of xenophobia, though he will find agency in writing haikus. In spite of the danger facing them, his mother tries to protect his innocence.

“He said our name like Canada instead of the way it was supposed to be pronounced, with soft a’s and the emphasis in the middle. He made our name sound like the squeak of chalk on a blackboard.”

This quote reveals how the American government lacks knowledge of Japanese culture and dehumanizes Japanese Americans. Patneaude uses a simile, where the Hanada name is likened to a “squeak of chalk.”

“I did try not to worry, but that seemed easier when I wasn’t home. So whenever Ray invited me over, I went. His house was anxious, but my house felt empty. His house was still filled with his family; they faced the unknown together. Without Dad, we couldn’t.”

This quote emphasizes the Importance of Family, particularly the father’s role. Ray’s family also fears the war, but they can lean on one another. Without Joe’s father, the Hanadas are broken. Mr. Hanada’s absence is overwhelming. This calls back to the Christmas tree being cut down: The Hanada family has been unrooted. These lines use repetition to achieve emphasis, seen in the repeatition of “His house.”

“People were frightened. And the newspapers kept feelings against Japanese Americans boiling. More articles—all bad—appeared. Stories of raids on Japanese American bad guys—spies—ran daily. I knew of no bad guys. No one did. But I noticed more bold-faced suspicion wherever I went—on the street, in stores, at school.”

Patneaude draws attention to how media stews anti-Japanese sentiments. Society trusts their newspapers to give unbiased and truthful reporting. If newspapers feature stories about Japanese Americans posing a threat, other Americans will believe it. The media can easily be used to fuel racism and xenophobia by lending bigotry an authoritative tone.

“I thought of the stories from Europe—Jews and other ‘undesirables’ taken from their homes, loaded onto trains, sent to camps. But that was Europe, that was the Nazis. This was America. It couldn’t happen here.”

This quote points out the hypocrisy of the US government: They decry and condemn the Germans for their concentration camps while using a similar incarceration strategy for their own citizens. The idea that “it couldn’t happen here” emphasizes how the camps used to imprison Japanese Americans conflict with American ideals. The United States champions freedom in theory, but unjustly imprisons their citizens based on nationality and race.

“I walked on. The fields should have been filled with people and activity. They were deserted. What was the point of planting? Who would care for the crops? Who would harvest? Young men were going to war, young women were going to Seattle to make bombers for Boeing. And Japanese American workers and tenant farmers? We were just going away.”

Patneaude reveals the toll war and mass incarceration takes on the economy and highlights the American government’s illogical decision to take Japanese Americans out of the workforce. Without Japanese American produce farmers, the agricultural business of the West, already made fragile by the war, will suffer. That the government is willing to risk their economy emphasizes the depths of their racism.

“I paid more attention to the birds than to the man, but one thing he said didn’t escape me: We—the Japanese Americans—were at Tule Lake for our own protection. I was a kid, but I knew that wasn’t true.”

The use of a young narrator highlights the injustice of the internment camps; this injustice is so obvious that even children can pick up on it. Joe can’t tolerate being lied to. Imprisoned in cruel conditions, forced away from his home, and threatened by malnutrition, cold, and no education, he and the prisoners are worse off and unprotected. The knowledge of injustice heightens the tragedy of the situation and deterioration of the Japanese American community’s psyche.

“I imagined what it would be like to lose a brother, to have him ambushed at sea. I thought of how scary it would be to find yourself trapped in a sinking ship or floating alone in the dark with mountains of frigid water everywhere around you. I was thankful I was on dry land. I was thankful for the heat.”

These lines capture the closeness between Joe and Mike, The Importance of Family, and how deeply Joe cares for his brother. Despite having endured so much, Joe sees death as the ultimate tragedy. Joe imagines Mike’s demise, highlighting the violence of war and the double tragedy of dying young and in a dangerous situation. He imagines Mike’s death so vividly that he’s grateful for the bleak reality of Tule Lake. Patneaude again uses repetition to create a sense of emphasis and lyricism: “I was thankful […] “I was thankful […].”

“Now we’ll be treated like Americans. This is an opportunity. In the next instant I’d think of Mike, that he’d be eighteen in less than a year. And the opportunity put on a scary mask that made me want to hide.”

The possibility of enlisting in the army and fighting on behalf of the United States is enticing, as Joe thinks it may help the family regain respect. However, this opportunity is really a “scary mask;” it is a lie, a fallacy, and won’t erase the American government’s racism and xenophobia. These lines also foreshadow how Mike will join the army and be killed.

“We honored her choice with silence. But I worried about what the decision would mean. Would she get deported to Japan? There were already people at the camp requesting repatriation, which meant they wanted to go back, or in the case of Nisei, go for the first time. Grandmother wasn’t one of those. She wanted to stay with us. But would she have a choice?”

The loyalty forms pose a problem for the Hanada family. They can’t tell the grandmother how to answer the questions, because that would be another form of oppression. Joe worries that answering yes-no—”no” meaning that she does not renounce Japan—will hurt his grandmother even more, even getting her deported. This quote highlights the stress placed on Japanese Americans in World War II. Any small or big thing could separate families forever, dehumanizing them in yet another way.

“I looked down at the camp, the rows of barracks stretching into the distance, the barbed wire and guard towers and people moving from place to place like rats in a maze.”

Patneaude uses a simile, comparing the people moving within the camp to “rats in a maze.” This provides a visual image of how prisoners are dehumanized at Tule Lake. The text highlights physical boundaries and their use by the American government to violate the rights of Japanese Americans.

“I shelved the thought in the back of my brain, where I kept most of my hopes. I hadn’t given up on them, but it didn’t do me any good to have them up front, where they might get in the way of real life. I had been away from home, locked up, for two years already. I wasn’t going to hold my breath waiting for something good to happen.”

Patneaude emphasizes the destruction incarceration and racism have wrought on Joe’s young psyche. Joe retains some hope, proving his resilience, but doesn’t hold out too much faith. This shows how he has suffered and been hardened by life.

“I heard the resignation in his voice. I also heard the strength. He was trying to bear up under one more burden, to make peace with the situation he’d found: a gain, a loss. Could I be like him? I wondered.”

With Mr. Hanada back in his life, Joe has a role model to replace Mike, though he doesn’t want a substitute. His father has suffered greatly in ways that Joe isn’t aware of. Mr. Hanada keeps his strength up and deals with life’s blows, even his son joining the army before they could be reunited. Joe gains faith from seeing his father’s strength, emphasizing how much Mr. Hanada has been needed throughout the last few years.

“And every time I thought about how grateful I was to have him back, I thought about all the time he’d been away, all the things I’d missed, he’d missed, we’d missed. He’d been gone for two and a half years. Was I supposed to be grateful for that? I remembered my resolution to be more like him.”

The joy of having his father back is tied to a darker sentiment: Joe’s resentment of his incarceration. Joe shouldn’t have had to learn how to live and grow without Mr. Hanada. The American government is to blame, but there’s nothing the Hanadas can do. This lost time is yet another injustice. Patneaude repeats “missed” three times in one sentence, underscoring Mr. Hanada’s loss. He also uses a rhetorical question—“Was I supposed to be grateful […]”—to vary the rhythm of the text and to highlight Joe’s unspoken answer: No, he was not.

“A letter came from Mike. He was okay, at least when he wrote the letter. I thought of the faraway stars, how their light could reach us long after they had died out. I pushed the thought away.”

Patneaude creates a metaphor, where something is compared to something else without the use of “like” or “as.” In this case, Joe compares Mike’s letter to the light of long-dead stars. The letters take a long time to arrive, and could function as Mike speaking to Joe from the dead, the way the light from stars reach Earth after the stars themselves have ceased. These lines foreshadow Mike’s death.

“In the comics Superman was making short work of some bad guys. I wished he were real, that he could wipe out the bad guys who had started this war. But he wasn’t real.”

Patneaude identifies the need for a superhero. At his young age, the only heroes Joe knows are the ones from his comic books. The world seems like a dark place. Between his own incarceration and the evils of World War II, Joe doesn’t believe that mere humans can fix the world’s wrongs. This emphasizes his resentments and loss of innocence.

“[…] we’re going to get this thing over with before you have to put on a uniform. But I want you to forget about the army, anyway. Try hard in school. Go to college. Show everyone what a good writer Joe Hanada is. Make something wonderful of yourself. Make all this worthwhile.”

Though Joe has lost some hope for his future, Mike continues dreaming for him. This positions Mike firmly in the role of Joe’s role model; Mike pursues his own dreams but dreams bigger for his little brother. He pictures a better world for Joe, one that he won’t have the chance to experience. He feels that if Joe can go to college, become a writer, and have a good and safe life, then all of Mike’s struggles and the Hanada’s sacrifices will be worth the pain. These lines illustrate how people frame trauma in terms of making the experience worth it because it’s the one way to cope with pain. Again, Patneaude uses repetition for emphasis and stylistic oomph: “Make something […]” “Make all this […].”

“I looked around our shabby little room and tried not to tell myself that this was what Mike had died for.”

In the wake of Mike’s death, Joe analyzes his incarceration in even starker terms. Mike had dreams for the future and kept Joe feeling positive about his life. But Mike’s death is a sacrifice that isn’t worth it. Ultimately, the barracks and Tule Lake become a symbol of a meaningless and tragic death.