Shizue's Path

Written by Mark Sakamoto

Illustrated by Rachel Wada

978-1-44346-459-8 

48 pp.

Ages 5-8

September 2023

 

You need to know your darkness to know your light.

This is a story from history of history. It's a history too many lived and one which should not have happened and should never happen again. Still, it is a story of resilience and courage that arose from discrimination.

From Shizue's Path, written by Mark Sakamoto, illus. by Rachel Wada

Shizue, now an elderly woman, welcomes her granddaughter to hear her story. Though her memory may be less than reliable about some things, Shizue remembers vividly her father heading out to fish and worrying about his safe return. He always reassured her.

When I am on the water, I am the water. I am clear. I am flowing. I am finding a path forward. Someday you will, too.

But then everything changes with the onset of World War II.

A war from far across the ocean washed up on our new country’s shore. 

First came the anti-Asian leagues and their protests. Then Japanese Canadians had their homes and businesses taken away and Shizue's family was relocated to the prairies. It was years before Shizue was able to return to school, and longer, not until after the war, before the family was able to return home. Still, it was not the same.

From Shizue's Path, written by Mark Sakamoto, illus. by Rachel Wada

Again, Japanese Canadians were being threatened, this time with deportation to Japan. Shizue, now a young woman attending the University of Toronto, finally saw that there were those, particularly Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, who would speak against the unfair treatment of Japanese Canadians and promote messages of peace, not hate. She took from them lessons of compassion and courage that set on her own true path.

From Shizue's Path, written by Mark Sakamoto, illus. by Rachel Wada

Mark Sakamoto, author of Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents, an adult fiction book that won the CBC Canada Reads in 2014, has taken a personal story–that of his aunt–and made it one of calm triumph over adversity. Shizue learned well from her father about seeing her path, to follow "Shikata ga nai" (trans. "It cannot be helped; you must carry on.") and from others like Rabbi Feinberg to create her own ripples of courage and compassion, wisdom and goodness. The stories of Japanese Canadian internment are plentiful, each providing a different perspective and context–see Mira and Baku, Naomi's Road, Torn Apart: The Internment Diary of Mary Kobayashi, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1941 and Stealing Home for just four examples–and Mark Sakamoto gives us yet another one, taking young readers along Shizue's Path from childhood to young woman and grandmother. And he gives us her story with a poetry of depth of emotion and wisdom. He makes her story beautiful, even in its darkness, just as artist Rachel Wada does.

Vancouver's Rachel Wada's first illustrated book, The Phone Booth in Mr. Hirota's Garden (written by Heather Smith), won the Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Canadian Picture Book Award for 2020, and her success with showing the weightiness of the story with the beauty of people and place is again evident in Shizue's Path. The gravity of Shizue's family's situation because of the anti-Asian racism and the lightness that comes with reading, family, and evidence of kindness are all demonstrated in Rachel Wada's art. She uses line and colour effectively to take us on that journey of adversity and comfort, through darkness into light, triumphant with wisdom and compassion.

Just as Shizue learned from her father and others about how to be resilient and show compassion, so will young readers for whom internment may or may not be an unknown concept. Shizue's Path demonstrates that Shizue could move through hardships and take important lessons from those who had the courage to share.