How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
These precautions didn't do him much good. He was not only an alien; he held a commercial fishing license, and in the early days of the war the FBI was picking up all such men, for fear they were somehow making contact with enemy ships off the coast. (I.1.15)
This part is all about Papa burning up all the stuff that's Japanese. But there's no point, and not just because he's an "alien"—it's because he's clearly Japanese. We'll just point out that German Americans didn't have to go through all of this. Why? We'll leave that one up to you…
Quote #2
One of his threats to keep us younger kids in line was "I'm going to sell you to the Chinaman." When I had entered kindergarten two years earlier, I was the only Oriental in the class. They sat me next to a Caucasian girl who happened to have very slanted eyes. I looked at her and began to scream, certain Papa had sold me out at last. My fear of her ran so deep I could not speak of it, even to Mama, couldn't explain why I was screaming…And it was still with me, this fear of Oriental faces, when we moved to Terminal Island. (1.2.3)
A white girl with slanted eyes… Jeanne must feel like she's in an alternate universe where one kind of Otherness (Orientalness) is clashing with another kind of foreignness (whiteness). It's almost as if Jeanne's forced to confront her fantasy of whiteness as a foreign Other too, which ends up making her fantasy more like a nightmare.