My Friend the Enemy

Hating the Japanese was simple before she met Sogoji.

Pearl Harbor was bombed on Hazel Anderson’s birthday and she’s been on the lookout for enemies ever since. She scours the skies above Mount Hood with her binoculars, hoping to make some crucial observation, or uncover the hideout of enemy spies.

But what she discovers instead is a 15-year-old orphan, hiding out, trying to avoid being sent to an internment camp. Sogoji was born in America. He’s eager to help Hazel with the war effort. Is this lonely boy really the enemy?
In this thought-provoking story of patriotism, loyalty, and belonging, Hazel must decide what it means to be a true American, and a true friend.

Grade 5-8–During World War II, 12-year-old Hazel Anderson is caught up in a fantasy world filled with comic-book caricatures of sneaky Japs defeated by heroic American civilians. Adored neighbor Jed Lanski, en route to the Pacific, has asked Hazel to check on his parents periodically. When she makes the startling discovery that they have hidden a 15-year-old orphaned Japanese-American boy, saving him from an internment camp, she changes her ideas about the enemy and her duties as an American. Hazel's developing friendship with Sogoji is embellished with several subplots, including her older sister's secret engagement to Jed and the new teacher's reason for downplaying his heroic war record. Although there are many novels and nonfiction works dealing with Japanese-American internment camps, there are none that deal specifically with avoiding internment. The premise is an intriguing one, but readers may find Hazel's transformation from a Jap-hater into someone who can sympathize with Sogoji's plight too sudden to be believable and may wish for a deeper exploration of the protagonist's evolving sensitivities.–Ginny Gustin, Sonoma County Library System, Santa Rosa, CA
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Gr. 5-8. When her older friend and neighbor, Jed, enlists and leaves for the Pacific during World War II, it marks the beginning of many changes for 11-year-old Hazel. At Jed's request, she befriends Sogoji, a lonely Japanese American orphan boy who lives and works in secret on Jed's parents' Oregon farm. As her rural community's hatred of the Japanese grows, Hazel feels it too, though she dissociates the enemy she fears from the boy who has become increasingly dear to her. She cannot count on neighbors to do the same. Throughout the book, Hazel slips easily from one reality to another, but when unexpected events jolt her quiet community, she finally, firmly takes a stand. Written in first person, this novel offers quiet but finely tuned portrayal of the stresses that changed life on the home front and one child's attempts to cope with it all. Carolyn Phelan
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