41 pages • 1 hour read
David PatneaudeThin Wood Walls
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Joe Hanada
Joe is the central protagonist and the novel’s narrator. His child’s point-of-view invites the reader’s empathy. At the beginning of the novel, he is an innocent bystander of a changing world. At the end, he is a teenager who has endured horrors. After the Imperial Japanese Army bombs Pearl Harbor in 1941, Joe is bullied. His family is ripped apart when his father is arrested, but Joe tries to maintain a semblance of normalcy by playing with his best friend Ray. Joe hopes for the best despite the racism he’s experiencing, but he’s also frightened by the alarmist reports of more possible bombings. Like other Japanese Americans, he faces two key fears: additional attacks from Japan and bigotry from Americans.
Executive Order 9066 upends Joe’s life. At Tule Lake, his childhood ends. He becomes more bitter and resentful, illustrating the perils of Coming-of-Age Amidst Atrocities. Joe tries to commit himself to writing in the journal his father gave him. Typically an avid storyteller, he struggles to express his feelings, which have become muddled by the challenges of living in Tule Lake and his internal struggle against his unjust and powerless situation. Joe finds more success in writing haikus, which capture both his surroundings and his emotions.
Two important events shake up Joe’s life all over again: His brother Mike volunteers for the army, and his father reunites with the family at Tule Lake. Joe misses his brother; he sees news about the war as ominous indications of the danger Mike is in. He imagines Mike dying and can’t stop the cycle of dread. In his father, he finds an admirable role model, but there is a natural distance, as Mr. Hanada has missed out on so much of what the family has endured. Joe hopes that the family can leave the camp. The novel ends with this hope as yet unrealized and the news of Mike’s death. Patneaude refuses to close on a falsely happy note, which would whitewash the tragic circumstances of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Mike Hanada
Mike Hanada is Joe’s older brother. Mike takes care of him and defends him against bullies, but Mike can’t defend him against incarceration. At the camp, Mike is already a teenager. He can better understand the depth of the injustice being inflicted on them and is angry. Mike is a natural fighter. In his life before the camps, he didn’t hesitate to get into physical altercations with other teens who made fun of his race or heritage. In the camps, Mike doesn’t have an outlet for his anger or desire to prove himself. Mike believes that he can prove his loyalty to his country, America, by serving in their military. But when Mike returns to the camp from army training to say goodbye to his family, he is treated like any other prisoner. Still, Mike is resilient; he genuinely believes that his service will help him and his family regain respect.
Additionally, Mike wants to fight in the war because he thinks it is his moral imperative to fight Hitler. Mike’s tragic death symbolizes his patriotism and courage. It also reflects injustice: Mike should never have had to join the army to prove his loyalty in the first place. Of all the sacrifices the Hanada family has made, losing Mike is the gravest.
Mike’s final act of service to his family is his journal, in which Joe finds Mike’s haiku. Both Mike and Joe struggled to express themselves, and found an outlet through their Japanese ancestry. The haiku connect the brothers after Mike’s death.
The Hanada Parents and Grandmother
Joe’s parents and grandmother are an important part of Joe’s life and represent a complicated American identity. Though they’ve left Japan behind them as first-generation Japanese immigrants, they are legally barred from owning American property or applying for citizenship. This makes them perpetual immigrants, Americans in practice only. Their lack of citizenship becomes more important during their incarceration. When asked if they would give up their allegiance to Japan, Joe’s grandmother in particular is put at odds with herself. Without American citizenship, giving up her Japanese citizenship would mean becoming stateless. The danger of being without a nation is not lost on anyone except for, apparently, the American government.
As Issei, Joe’s parents and grandmother are particularly vulnerable; they have no rights or way to defend themselves in court. They have tried hard to make an American life in America. but are viewed as enemies.
Sandy
Sandy is a secondary character and white American. His kindness represents the humanity that can and should exist in society. As a soldier overseeing Tule Lake, Sandy should be a threat to the Hanada family. But Sandy is kind and generous, and doesn’t believe in the incarceration of Japanese Americans. Sandy does his job with kindness. He encourages Mike to be more patient, and encourages Joe to pursue his writing, nicknaming him “Mark Twain.” Though Sandy is a cog in the machine of xenophobia, his character illustrates that Americans can treat people humanely. Sandy even takes Mike and Joe for excursions, showing generosity that is at odds with the ethos of the internment camp. Sandy is ordered away from Tule Lake to fight in the war, and replaced by abusive soldiers. Patneaude emphasizes that brutality and abuse are a choice.
