Flags by Maxine Trottier

This story portrayed the forced Japanese emigration during the WW2 period. Many many Japanese families were sent back to Japan because the government thought they could be used as spies, even though many of these people were born in North America.
 
The story is about a girl who goes to visit her grandmother. The next door neighbour is an older Japanese man and the girl goes over to help him with his garden every day. The garden is something she's never seen before, it has no flowers or plants, it's mostly rocks and has a pond with koi fish, which she feeds. Then one day her grandmother tells her that many Japanese people are being sent away, and she finds out that the old man is one of them. She sits with the old man watching the sun go down and promises him that she'll look after his garden for him. After a while a new couple moves in and tears up the garden, replacing it with a western style garden. The girl takes the fish and sets them free and a stone and when she gets home she starts a small rock garden of her own.
 
I thought this was a good way to relay the information in picture book form. It tells the reader what happened and lets them feel the sadness, but does it gently.