Sylvia and Aki (book)

On the eve of Pearl Harbor, the Munemitsus—two Issei parents, nineteen year old Seiko and third-grader Aki—live on a farmhouse in Westminster, California. But like other Japanese Americans, they are forcibly removed from their house and farm. Their banker helps them arrange the rental of their farm to a Mexican American family, the Mendezes. Sylvia Mendez looks forward to entering the third grade at Westminster Elementary School the fall of 1942 with her two younger brothers. But despite living near the school, they are turned away and forced to attend the inferior "Mexican" school across town. Angered, Sylvia's father Gonzalo writes letters and meets with school officials to no avail. He eventually decides to file a lawsuit along with other affected parents, challenging the segregated schools. In the meantime, Aki and her family are incarcerated at the Poston , Arizona, camp, separately from her father, who is held in an enemy alien internment camp. Sylvia, who sleeps in Aki's old room, finds Aki's old Japanese doll, and vows to take care of it for her. When the Munemitsus return home after the war, Sylvia and Aki become fast friends and play together nearly every day. When the Mendezes leave the farm to return to Santa Ana, the girls exchange dolls. The story ends with Sylvia's graduation from the now integrated Santa Ana High School in 1955. An Afterword updates us on both families and notes the significance of the Mendez case. The thirteen chapters alternate between Sylvia's story and Aki's story.

Author Winifred Conkling was born in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism. After writing over twenty adult non-fiction books, mostly on health related topics, she turned to writing books for children. Learning of the story of the Mendez case through media coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Brown case, she realized the story—with the addition of the Japanese American incarceration element—would make a good children's book. After interviewing the real life Sylvia and Aki, she began writing the story as non-fiction before settling on writing it as a novel. In addition to the interviews, Conklng also quotes part of the actual transcript in her depiction of the Mendez trial.

Sylvia & Aki received mostly positive reviews and won several awards. Kirkus Reviews called it a well-documented, quietly powerful story," while Esther Keller in Library Media Connection called the story "truly a fascinating one." ^[1] However Keller also found "the retelling a bit dry," and Hope Morrison in the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books found the writing "purposive, with factual material crammed into pedantic dialogue between the girls and their parents." ^[2] Among others, Sylvia & Aki received the Jane Addams Children's Literature Award and the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children's Book Award.

There are a few minor historical errors in the text. As is the case with many fictional accounts of Japanese American incarceration, some conditions are exaggerated. When Aki arrives, she notes the "tiny blades of the barbed-wire fence [that] glinted like silver shark's teeth in the sunlight" (page 68); however, the fence at Poston was not built until November 1942, a few months after her arrival. It is also claimed that the individual units within a barrack were divided just by blankets (69); while many inmates did subdivide their units with blankets, the individual units did in fact have walls between them, albeit walls that did not go all the way to the roof. There are also some curious inconsistencies with dates, with both main parts of the books being misdated. Part I of the book, which includes chapters 1 through 6 is titled "California and Arizona 1941"; yet aside from part of one chapter on the Munemitsu's reaction to the attack on Pearl Harbor, everything else in these chapters takes place in 1942. Part II of the book, which includes chapters 7 through 13, is titled "California and Arizona, 1944–1945"; yet it includes Seiko and one of his friends wrestling with the so-called " loyalty questionnaire ," which took place early in 1943. Early in the book, we are told that Seiko was born on Lincoln's birthday of 1922 (his middle name is "Lincoln"); later we are told that he had just turned eighteen prior to the "loyalty questionnaire" episode, when in fact he would have just turned twenty-one. In the "Afterword," Conkling writes that Executive Order 9066 was responsible for "creating wartime internment camps to hold Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants" (141); while EO9066 authorized the subsequent forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans, the order itself says nothing about Japanese Americans or "internment camps." The "Afterword" also mentions the "coincidence" of Earl Warren ending school segregation as the governor of California and also being the chief justice of the Supreme Court that struck down segregated schools nationally through the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education ruling in 1954 (141); Conkling does not mention Warren's earlier role as one the loudest and most influential voices agitating for the removal and imprisonment of Japanese Americans in early 1942.

There are at least two other children's books based on the Mendez case, the picture book Mendez v. Westminster: For All the Children by Michael Matsuda and Sandra Robbie (Blue State Press, 2006) and Duncan Tonatiuh's Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family's Fight for Desegregation (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2014).