Floating Home (short story)

Short story about a family returning to Little Tokyo from Rohwer . When fourteen-year-old Mari returns home with her parents, she expects to go to their old house, but is dismayed when they go to a run down residential hotel instead. Her father explains to her that they had rented the house they had lived in before the war, and they it was now being rented to someone else. Mari decides to walk to the house to take a last look. She finds an African American girl about her age on the swing in front. Initially suspicious, the girl becomes friendlier when Mari tells her why she and her family had to leave and invites her inside.

Floating Home was a finalist in the 2015 Imagine Little Tokyo Short Story Contest. Author Morrill, whose Japanese American mother was about the same age as Mari and had also been in American concentration camps, is also the author of the camp themed novel The Red Kimono .

Might also like Journey Home by Yoshiko Uchida; The Little Exile by Jeanette A. Arakawa ; " The Service Flags " by Bill Hosokawa;