On the Horizon: World War II Reflections
Written by Lois Lowry and Illustrated by Kenard Pak
Bibliography:
Lowry, L., & Pak, K. (2020). On the Horizon: World War II Reflections. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Summary:
On the Horizon is a World War II poetry book split into three parts: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, and the author's personal experience around both tragedies growing up in both Hawaii and Japan. The poetry itself acts as a memorial for the fallen of both events.
Analysis:
Lowry does an amazing job blending her own personal experiences during the time she lived in both Hawaii and Japan surrounding the events of World War II with the memorialization of the victims of the both the attack on Pearl Harbor and the bombing of Hiroshima. The juxtaposition of the events side-by-side in the book highlight the horrendous nature of both events and clarify to the reader there was no "victor," at either time as both peoples honor and grieve for each other just as much as they honor and grieve for their own losses.
Pak's illustration supply the memorial poems with faces that humanize the stories and add to the emotional impact; it's hard to see people as just numbers and facts when you can picture who they are and what their lives could have been. For me, one of the strongest poem/illustration combinations in the book were in Part Two with the poems The Red Tricycle and The Tricycle, which depict the events of four-year-old Shinichi Tetsutani's death and resting place after the nuclear blast took his life while still riding his favorite red tricycle. Seeing the drawing of the little boy in one poem then the lone, broken tricycle in the other is just utterly heartbreaking.
Excerpt:
8:15, December 1941
Frank Cabiness, PFC,
survived. From his station
in the mainmast high above,
he looked down
and saw that half of his ship
was gone.
His hands were burned.
Not like his shipmates',
charred by flaming oil,
his were friction burns. Grasping
ropes and ladders, he slid down eighty feet
to save himself that morning.
His watch (his children have it still)
stopped at 8:15.
Time doesn't matter now, to Frank.
At eighty-six, he returned to his ship.
Divers took his ashes down
and placed them in the fourth gun turret,
where he would rest with his shipmates.
A bugler played taps
as they took the urn and dove.
8:15, August 1945
Shinji Mikamo was helping his father
that morning.
He remembered that it was a hot day.
He was up on the roof.
He had raised his arm to wipe the sweat from his forehead, when he saw
the blinding flash.
His father had just called to him
to stop daydreaming.
Was this part of a dream?
Then came a thundering roar,
and he was thrown under the collapsing house.
Two months later, at last
able to walk again, Shinji left
the hospital and made his way home,
looking for his father.
He never saw him again.
But he found, in the ruins,
his father's watch. 8:15, it said.
Activity Idea:
The poetry depicted in Lowry's book is full of historical tragedy, but it would mesh well in a school environment while students are learning about World War II. Many history classes lose the emotional impact of tragic events because they focus on the facts. But poetry can provide both cold facts and a deep emotional understanding of what those specific events caused to the impacted people. I think the most appropriate activity would be to read the book aloud with the class while discussing the connection of Pearl Harbor and the bombing of Hiroshima, which can lead into an open discussion about the personal impact of larger acts of war.
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