We Are Not Free

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

The Injustice of Government-Sanctioned Racism

The novel begins just three months after Pearl Harbor. Racial tensions have already been an issue faced by many in the Japanese community in San Francisco. However, in the days after the attack, tensions have exploded into racially-motivated violence against people of East Asian descent. The danger is enough that Mas has issued a warning to his little brother, Minnow: “Don’t give them any excuse” (1). As 14-year-old Minnow makes his way home, a group of Caucasian boys attack him, calling him a racial slur and accusing him of “spying on us” (8).

Many American historical narratives omit the event of the U.S. government’s internment camps, but most narratives that include the fact frame the motivation thus: The U.S. government was worried about having large Japanese communities on the West Coast because of its proximity to Japan, and they did not want any group to turn on the nation and compromise its military institutions. The government therefore strategically displaced or imprisoned thousands of Japanese Americans, forcing whole communities to sell all their belongings before being taken to improvised camps (essentially prisons)—ostensibly for the safety of the American people. The United States thereby government-sanctioned racism; if the government deemed Japanese Americans a threat grave enough to warrant their coerced isolation, it implicitly justified the everyday citizen’s fear or animosity toward those same people.

In Chee’s novel, there is great anger among the younger characters because of the government’s vilifying marginalization of their people. The young people see the unfairness, especially since most of them were born in the States and have never set foot in Japan. They also see the toll it takes on their parents as they are forced to sell all their belongings and pack their lives into two suitcases. Moreover, many in the community fear that some of the “Issei” (first generation Japanese Americans) will be deported because “they’ve never been allowed to become naturalized citizens” (4). The outrage at this injustice and racism leads some families (such as Tommy’s parents) to choose to return to Japan voluntarily.

Racism permeates the novel’s setting, beginning with Minnow’s walk through the streets of San Francisco where he sees an advertisement featuring a degrading caricature of a Japanese soldier. Later Mas reflects on the similarities between the treatment he receives and the treatment of Black people in Mississippi. Yuki experiences racism when she talks her coach into buying ice cream for the softball team, but the clerk turns them away, refusing to serve Yuki.

While racism and injustice are already fundamentally intertwined, the novel specifically dramatizes the relationship through emphasizing that racism spurs the unjust treatment the Japanese families in the story. Historically, the American government’s “official” narrative might have tried to justify the discriminatory violence, but racism inevitably emerges as the core motivation.

The Power of Friendship and Family: “We are not free. But we are not alone.”

In the first chapter, Minnow introduces his brothers and their friend group who ranges in age from 14 to 20. There’s Mas and Shig, Tommy and Twitchy, and Stan and Frankie. Minnow describes them each with great affection, especially Twitchy. As the novel progresses, more people are included in this group—Aiko, Yuki, Yum-yum, Mary, Keiko, Bette, and Kiyoshi. These friendships’ importance is immediately clear. Yum-yum, after Minnow, is the first to express her gratitude for her friends: “We are not free. But we are not alone” (72). This statement is a powerful expression of how lonely, frightening, and unfair the whole situation is—but the painful experience is more tolerable with friends. The line illuminates the significance of the novel’s title.

The novel’s events are relayed from a different character’s perspective in each chapter. Some characters are angry and looking to change their circumstances, while others accept the situation and try to make the best of it. Each character is different, and each has a different experience—but one the one thing they share is their affection for each other. Frankie is so angry he wants to run away from the camp, but he chooses to stay because he cannot imagine abandoning his friends. At the same time, Shig and Bette both decide to ask for resettlement in distant cities, but they both keep in touch with friends. Stan and Tommy are separated from the group when they and their families become “No-Nos” during the questionnaire drama, but they also manage to maintain contact with their friends. These events evince the strong connection within this young group and how it is almost like a family.

The main characters also have their biological families, each of which has its own dynamic. Mas, Minnow, and Shig’s mother is a widow whom they all lovingly care for. Keiko’s parents were both taken by the FBI to a separate camp immediately after Pearl Harbor, so she lives with her aunt and uncle in the camps. Yum-yum’s father was also taken, so she steps up to take responsibility for her mother and little brother. Frankie lives with his uncle because his parents sent him to California from New York. Tommy’s and Stan’s home lives are complicated by angry, unhappy parents.

Each family presents its own complexities. For Mas, Minnow, and Shig, it is a single-parent home in which Mas has had to delay his education to earn wages as a parental figure. For Tommy, home is a place where he will never be what his parents desire. For Stan, home life involves the realization that his parents, just like him, are wrestling with their situation. For Kiyoshi, family means a violent stepfather and a powerless mother.

Family has many meanings in this novel. For some, it is friends who will always be there. For others, it represents pain and disappointment. Still for others, family is exactly what it’s supposed to be, a source of unconditional love. For all of them, family is more than just the biological unit; it is friends with whom they surround themselves. This theme of family and friendships is distinctly clear in Chapter 14, “We Hold Our Breath.” Even though the friends are mostly separated—some resettled in different cities, some in different camps, and two still at war—they grieve Twitchy together. They are a family who lost one of their own, and yet they find “each other in the darkness” (306).

The Mutability of Home

Like “family,” “home” has many definitions. It can be defined, in basic terms, as the place where one lives. However, Chee’s novel gives home a much bigger meaning. In the opening chapter, Minnow describes his home as a small apartment where he lives with his mother and his two brothers—but he continues by describing San Francisco, the city itself. He talks about the view of the Golden Gate bridge from his school, the streets where a diversity of people is seen at any given time. He talks about the businesses along his walk toward Japantown. There’s the Sutro Baths he’s never been allowed to enter, the drugstore, the Jewish Community Center, and the grocery store, Katsumoto Co., owned by his friend Stan’s parents. Minnow introduces his home by describing familiar sights that make up his world. However, by the end of the chapter, anticipating Minnow’s eviction looms; Frankie puts Minnow’s thoughts to words when he says, “Sure gonna miss this place when Uncle Sam kicks us out” (17).

Minnow and his community are ordered to pack their lives into two suitcases and board buses to an unknown destination. Without argument, they agree. Their first destination is a temporary camp and former horse racetrack. Each family is assigned a barrack in a “stable meant for a single horse” (51). From there, they move to a hastily built camp in Utah; its barracks are a small improvement from the stables. However, they make the best of it. Minnow makes friends in the camps, goes to work for the high school newspaper as an artist, and makes a home out of this strange world he’s been forced into. Others also find a place in these camps, as when Yuki enthusiastically plays for the softball team. Still others move on and find happiness in new places, as when Bette is content in New York. Despite the adversity, the characters make new homes for themselves.

After three years, the government releases the families from these incarceration camps. Minnow and his mother are among the first to return to San Francisco. Their old neighborhood, Japantown, is now largely populated by Caucasian families, many of the businesses converted into bars and nightclubs. A new family owns Katsumoto Co., and many of the landlords refuse rental to the returning Japanese families. Mr. Oishi is forced to involve the police to evict a white family renting an apartment in his house.

Minnow’s old home no longer exists. Minnow even broaches the idea of moving somewhere else with his mother, but she refuses. To her, San Francisco is home no matter how many changes come. In the end, Minnow gazes on the Golden Gate Bridge from his high school, coming full circle to where his story began. In that moment—with the normalcy of Mas insisting he returns to school, the presence of Stan and Shig in his life, and the view of his favorite bridge—Minnow realizes, “We’re home” (364). Minnow understands his mother’s perspective, and he accepts that the United States and San Francisco are his home.

Gaman: Dignity and Endurance

Gaman is a Japanese word meaning to accept a painful situation with honor and courage. The term first appears in the novel when Shig is angry about his family’s forced dispossession and their relocation to the incarceration camps; his mother tells him that they must have patience with their circumstances, citing the virtue of gaman, to “persevere or endure” (32).

This only further angers Shig, who does not understand why he should accept this injustice. However, as he prepares to leave San Francisco, he witnesses gaman among his friends and neighbors. He watches Mrs. Katsumoto place a sign in the grocery window thanking their customers—including the Caucasians who purchase their belongings at ridiculously low prices—for their years of patronage. Shig then watches as Yum-yum plays her beloved piano in the street before the movers take it to the new owner. He is touched by her bravery and perseverance—her gaman.

Gaman is mentioned again in Chapter 13, Twitchy’s chapter. He mentions a conversation with a Caucasian soldier who asked him how the Japanese American soldiers remain so fearless in the face of battle. The man asks if they have some sort of East Asian meditation trick. Twitchy jokes that the man discovered their secret, but that it takes years of silence to master. However, Twitchy privately thinks of gaman. Not only are the Japanese American soldiers persevering, but they are trying to prove their worth and their patriotism by being the best soldiers possible. They are motivated to prove themselves for their families back home, a motivation the Caucasian soldiers lack.

Finally, gaman comes up in the last chapter of the book. Minnow and his mother search for an apartment, going from listing to listing. They are continuously turned away. Minnow grows silently angry as he sees the racism at work. He is discouraged, but his mother takes each rejection in stride. He recognizes this as gaman, but he is annoyed. “Gaman again. Sometimes I am so sick of gaman” (351). However, when Mas insists Minnow re-enrolls in school, and Minnow sees his city through new eyes, he accepts that this place will always be home. If not for gaman, Minnow might not have stuck it out; he might have gone to Chicago to live with Shig or to New York with Bette. Instead, he stayed with his mother, and he reclaims his love for his city.

As the novel closes, despite everything, Minnow has endured. So have his friends. Tommy defied his parents to stay in the United States with Aiko and his friends. Stan and Kiyoshi survived the deplorable conditions in the Tule Lake stockade. Mas and Frankie are still fighting in Europe. Shig returns to San Francisco to rebuild a life with Minnow and his mother. Several of the others are making plans to return to San Francisco. They’ve all survived the injustice of being placed in incarceration camps. They’ve all persevered.