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(More customer reviews)A good book that I recently read is Under the Blood Red Sun. It is a realistic historical fiction book by Graham Salisbury. It takes place on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, before, during, and after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
The story is told from the point-of-view of Tomikazu (Tomi), an innocent Japanese-American boy living near Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack. Then Pearl Harbor is bombed. Tomi must deal with racism, bullies, and cruelty.
Tomikazu is a friendly eighth-grade boy who likes to play baseball, and has consequently formed his own team, The Rats. He is loyal to his friends and will even face the crazy school bully, Keet Wilson, for them.
Billy and The rats are Tomi's best friends, being eighth grade and avid fans of baseball like he is. Billy is the friend that Tomi hangs out with the most. He is The Rat's star pitcher and is kind of shy.
From the very beginning, even before Pearl Harbor was bombed, Keet Wilson, the local bully, is a problem. He is a spoiled brat who can take down even Billy's older brother, Jake. His extremely strict father is Tomi's family's landlord, so they cannot do anything to harm him. However, after the bombing, Keet takes being mean to a whole new level. Keet reports Tomi's father and grandfather to the police, falsely accusing them of being Japanese agents. He also tells the police anything Tomi's family does, exaggerating it so it sounds like they are Japanese supporters. He kills Tomi's father's prize racing pigeons, saying that they are messenger pigeons. He also breaks Tomi's family's clothesline and spoils their water supply.
The book starts out several days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It encompasses some of The Rat's baseball games, and their friendship with another team. Then Pearl Harbor is bombed. Tomi's peaceful life erupts into chaos. Everyone is suspicious of all the Japanese, and there are several lynch mobs. His father is shot in the leg by an American aircraft and taken away when coming back from a harmless fishing trip. Many Japanese are being taken the mainland internment camps, which are places that the U.S. government built so Japanese-Americans would not spy. But what will happen to Tomi's family as the only peaceful world they had ever known is crumbling around them?
The largest theme in the book is teamwork. Tomikazu's baseball team sticks together through Pearl Harbor, other baseball games, and bullies. It is a theme that makes you think teams can pull through anything, which they usually can. Another theme is racism. Tomi struggles through the racism directed at Japanese-Americans by white Americans who feared that they were spies following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
I would recommend this book to anyone ages 11-14. It is a very good book, and deservedly won the prestigious Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. It is very accurate for that timeframe, and it teaches in an entertaining way. It accurately describes the fear and racism following Pearl Harbor and gives glimpses of life in the internment camps. This book is suited for anyone who wants a realistic historical fiction or a tale with courage and bravery. The author writes this book seriously, staying on topic with very few humorous jokes, although it gives me an almost perfect mindset of where it takes place. It describes almost everything, from the dew on the leaves to the dust on the baseball diamond.
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