YA Book Tour- Hawaii

At last we have come to the end of United States of YA book with Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury representing Hawaii.

Tomikazu, or Tomi, is the son of Japanese immigrants living in Hawaii in 1941. His father has a boat he works as a fisherman on, and his mother cleans the house of a wealthy haole (white person).  His grandfather also lives with them, and is proud of his Japanese heritage and customs.  He also has a younger sister, Kimi.

Tomi is a pretty typical young teenage boy for the time.  He and his friend love baseball. His best friend, Billy (a haole) is an amazing pitcher, and helps their team the Rats do pretty well.  Tomi's life changes drastically on the morning on December 7th.  While he and Billy are out practicing baseball they hear the explosions and soon see the Japanese planes flying overhead. His father is taken prisoner when he returns on his fishing boat, and the haole family tells his mother they no longer need to clean their home.  Tomi learns what is really means to be family, and sees the best and worst of human nature.

This books is a fantastic look at life in Hawaii just before and after the Pearl Harbor bombing.  It presents an excellent picture of how fear can motivate people to do terrible things, and how kindness can be found even in the darkest of times.

Tomi is a wonderful character.  Fiercely loyal to both his friends and family.  He shows interesting growth as he learns to take to heart the lessons of his father about how to behave, even when people push him to his breaking point.

 While Tomi is the main character, Billy will also make quite the impression on you.  He is dedicated to being the best he can be at pitching.  He is kind and loyal.  Probably my favorite scenes in the book involved him, one on Tomi's father's boat, and one where he met Mari.  Both of those were touching, and beautifully written.

I definitely recommend this book, not only for the setting, but for the history we see in everyday living form.

With that our journey is at an end.  I hope to get the final YA map up tomorrow, and give the list of my top 5, not to be missed books.  For now, I will get back to my regularly schedule reading program. Catching up on the series that I have been reading and new books have come out since starting the tour, plus finishing some of the series that I started on the tour.  Eventually, I plan to get around the Epic Reads YA of Europe tour, but for now I reading what I want.

Currently Reading:
Scarlet
by Marissa Meyer