White Road of Thorns: Journalist's Diary—Trials and Tribulations of the Japanese American Internment During World War II (book)

Wartime diary of Issei journalist and Japanese language school teacher Hisa Aoki that covers the period prior to her return to Japan on the second voyage of the Gripsholm . Originally published in Japan in 1953, it was translated into English by Archie Miyamoto at the behest of Aoki's elder daughter, Mary Yoko Nakamura.

Aoki, born in 1900, was a well-known columnist for the Kashu Mainichi newspaper in Los Angeles (under the pen name "Yamamoto Asako") and a teacher at the Hollywood Japanese Language School prior the war. Her husband, Tokumon Aoki, ran the school along with his wife. The couple's two older sons had been sent to Japan as children and were separated from the rest of the family during the war. Her husband was arrested and interned in March of 1942 and taken initially to the Tuna Canyon detention camp. In May, Hisa and her two daughters, aged thirteen and ten, were sent to the Santa Anita Assembly Center and initially housed in a horse stall before being moved to barracks. Though they expected to return to Japan on an exchange ship, they are transferred to the Gila River , Arizona, concentration camp in October 1942 before finally being granted passage on the second voyage of the Gripsholm in September 1943. The diary begins on December 7 and mostly covers the months prior to the incarceration and life at Santa Anita, with the entries on Gila being more sparse and ending in July 1943 with the official word that they will sailing for Japan. Aoki's account is often pessimistic and angry, and she recounts her mental and physical suffering and the desultory conditions at Santa Anita, before finding some satisfaction doing farm labor at Gila. The book includes translation of the two original forewords as well as new acknowledgments and a history of the Aoki family by Mary Yoko Nakamura.

Might also like The Evacuation Diary of Hatsuye Egami by Claire Gorfinkel; Enemy Alien by Kiyo Hirano; The Block Manager: A True Story of Love in the Midst of Japanese American Internment Camps by Judy Mundle