Parents' Guide to Pearl

As PEARL begins, it's 1941 and 13-year-old Amy Hiroshi Hakata is living in Hawaii with her parents and baby brother. When her great-grandmother falls ill, her parents decide it will be Amy who travels to Japan to see her. At her uncle and aunt's farm outside of Hiroshima, Amy loves spending time with her great-grandmother, who had been a pearl diver when she was a girl. Amy's trip is supposed to last only three months, but when Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, she finds herself stranded. It's not long before Japanese soldiers come to the farm, take her into the city of Hiroshima, and put her to work as a translator. At first, she thinks her work might actually help people in Japan understand America, but she soon begins to feel the work she's doing has made her a traitor to her country. That all changes when she learns that her family has been sent to an internment camp. Amy becomes angry and stops thinking of herself as an American. When the first atomic bomb is dropped on the city of Hiroshima, Amy survives but is injured, her face badly burned. She has to make a long and dangerous journey back to her uncle's farm. Then, once again, soldiers arrive at the farm asking for Amy. But this time it's American soldiers, and they want her to come back to Hiroshima and help them gather the stories of people who survived the bombing. With the war over, Amy wants to go home to America, but where is her home now? Is she an American, or has she become Japanese?