The Fences Between Us: The Diary of Piper Davis (book)

Novel for elementary and middle schoolers about a young white teenage girl's experience of World War II including the Japanese American removal and incarceration told in the form of a diary. The Fences Between Us is part of the Dear America series, all of which are written in the form of diaries by young women/girls from various key moments in U.S. history.

Piper Davis is the youngest daughter of Rev. Emery Davis, the pastor of the Seattle Japanese Baptist Church. Piper's mother had died when she was a baby, so she had been raised in part by a governess, Mrs. Harada. As the story begins, Piper's brother Hank has just enlisted in the navy, while her sister, Margie, is a college student. The thirteen-year-old Piper, an avid photographer, has a best friend, Trixie, and a crush on a classmate Bud Greene. On weekends, she helps her father with church Sunday schools.

The Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor is doubly shocking for the Davis family: beyond the surprise of the attack itself, they know that Hank had been stationed there, on the U.S.S. Arizona . As they wait for news, Rev. Davis goes to the aid of several families whose husbands/fathers have been arrested by the FBI, including Mr. Harada and the father of Piper's friend, Betty Sato. Tensions rise in the community and at school, where some of Piper's friends express anti-Japanese feelings. Piper is confused, on the one hand, supporting security measures aimed at Japanese Americans, but knowing that people like the Haradas and Satos are just as American as she. We see the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans through Piper's eyes, as she makes frequent visits to Puyallup with her father. Resentful at times that her father seems to care more about the incarcerated Japanese Americans than his own family, she is later shocked when her father decides to move to Idaho to minister to his congregation incarcerated at Minidoka . Between the Japanese American elements of the story, Piper writes of a first boyfriend, girl friends at school, and older brothers, both Hank and Jim, Betty's older brother.

Author Kirby Larson, a Seattle native, was inspired in part to write the book by the story of Rev. Emery Andrews , the real life pastor of Seattle Japanese Baptist Church whose story roughly parallels Rev. Davis's. Ada Mahon , the principal of Bailey Gatzert Elementary School, is also portrayed in the novel. Larson later wrote a second book with the incarceration as its backdrop, Dash (2014), about a girl from Bainbridge Island, Washington , who was forced to leave her beloved dog behind when she and her family are forcibly removed.

Reviewers praised Piper's "convincing narration" and believable voice and the integration of historical detail into the narrative. ^[1] Terry Hong of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center's BookDragon blog and Kim Dare in School Library Journal highlighted the many supplementary materials included in the book and on the publisher's website. ^[2] One reviewer found the ending "a bit abrupt," while another found that the "diary format forces the narrative into some unrealistic situations." ^[3] Tamiko Nimura in the International Examiner notes that Japanese Americans might be disappointed that the story is told through the eyes of a white protagonist, rather than a Japanese American one. ^[4]