Cherry Blossom Baseball

by Jennifer Maruno

itsu

  when

  gyoza

  dumpling

  okoko

  odorous pickled vegetable root

  gaman suru

  be patient, put up with it

  maho

  magic

  Italian vocabulary in order of appearance

  buon giorno

  good day, hello

  si

  yes

  Signora

  Mrs.

  grazie

  thank you

  mi filio

  my son

  scarpe

  shoes

  Costa succedde?

  What’s happening?

  Va!

  Go!

  Racial slang in order of appearance

  Chink

  a Chinese person

  Eye-ties

  Italians

  Nips

  Japanese (Nippon)

  When the Cherry Blossoms Fell

  Short-listed for the 2012 Pacific Northwest Young Readers Choice Award and for the 2011 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Award.

  Nine-year-old Michiko Minagawa bids her father good-bye before her birthday celebration. She doesn’t know the government has ordered all Japanese-born men out of the province. Ten days later, her family joins hundreds of Japanese-Canadians on a train to the interior of British Columbia. Even though her aunt Sadie jokes about it, they have truly reached the “Land of No.” There are no paved roads, no streetlights, and no streetcars. The house in which they are to live is dirty and drafty. At school Michiko learns the truth of her situation. She must face local prejudice, the worst winter in forty years and her first Christmas without her father.

  Cherry Blossom Winter

  Ten-year-old Michiko wants to be proud of her Japanese heritage but can’t be.

  After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, her family’s possessions are confiscated and they are forced into deprivation in a small, insular community. The men are sent to work on the railway, so the women and children are left to make the trip on their own. After a former Asahi baseball star becomes her new teacher, life gets better. Baseball fever hits town, and when Michiko challenges the adults to a game with her class, the whole town turns out.

  Then the government announces that they must move once again. But they can’t think of relocating with a new baby coming, even with the offer of free passage to Japan. Michiko pretends to be her mother and writes to get a job for her father on a farm in Ontario. When he is accepted, they again pack their belongings and head to a new life in Ontario.

  Available at your favourite bookseller

  Dundurn.com

  @dundurnpress

  Facebook.com/dundurnpress

  Pinterest.com/dundurnpress

  Copyright © Jennifer Maruno, 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Editor: Allister Thompson Design: Laura Boyle

  Composite image and cover design: Laura Boyle

  Cover images: © KPG_Payless/shutterstock.com (girl); Blossom image © Elizabeth Bernstein/Dreamstime.com

  Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Maruno, Jennifer 1950-, author

  Cherry blossom baseball : a cherry blossom book / Jennifer Maruno., author

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-3166-0 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3167-7 (pdf).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3168-4 (epub)

  1. Japanese Canadians--Evacuation and relocation, 1942-1945--Juvenile fiction. I. Title.

  PS8626.A785C537 2015 jC813'.6 C2015-902195-2

  C2015-902196-0

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

  The publisher is not responsible for websites or their content unless they are owned by the publisher.

  Visit us at: Dundurn.com | @dundurnpress | Facebook.com/dundurnpress | Pinterest.com/dundurnpress