This is a story that is going to stick with me for a long time and I hope to revisit it in the future again once I’ve learned more about the camps on my own. It also shows the reality for so many people in our country when it came to the camps and being Japanese in the 1940s. Getting to see the camps through Kiku reimagined eyes and how little she knew despite being from the future shows the gaps that are left in history classes in school. Getting to see the reimagined photos in the graphic novel of what the camps looked like and how the people acted helps bring it to life more than if it had just been written word. No one wanted to talk about it or the consequences/mark it has left on the country. The story of Japanese Americans who were put into camps during WWII is one that until recent history is one that was meant to be forgotten. Kiku Hughes weaves a riveting, bittersweet tale that highlights the intergenerational impact and power of memory.ĭisplacement tells the story of Kiku Hughes’s family while also adding in some fiction due to missing pieces. She witnesses the lives of Japanese-Americans who were denied their civil liberties and suffered greatly, but managed to cultivate community and commit acts of resistance in order to survive. Living alongside her young grandmother and other Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, Kiku gets the education she never received in history class.

These displacements keep occurring until Kiku finds herself “stuck” back in time.

Kiku is on vacation in San Francisco when suddenly she finds herself displaced to the 1940s Japanese-American internment camp that her late grandmother, Ernestina, was forcibly relocated to during World War II. Genre: Historical Fiction, WWII, Science Fiction, Graphic NovelĪ teenager is pulled back in time to witness her grandmother’s experiences in World War II-era Japanese internment camps in Displacement, a historical graphic novel from Kiku Hughes.

Displacement kiku hughes