Arts Listings

Are you interested in little old white lady, self-supporting, spinster-librarians? Do you assume much doesn’t go on in their lives beyond the spectacles and reading all those books? Well, meet “Miss Breed.” She took chances, risked her career and income by taking an activist stance during World War II.  

“Miss Breed” was the San Diego Public Library’s first Children’s Librarian. She worked in the branch used by the city’s Japanese American children. Within four months of Dec. 7, 1941, San Diego Nikkei were forced to leave their homes, schools, jobs, and public libraries.  

At the train station “Miss Breed” distributed self-addressed post cards to “her children” and sent them packages of books and other necessities that she purchased as she came to know their locations. She wrote about their condition and struggled to get published in library literature. And more. 

I learned of “Miss Breed” because recently I happened to tune into Book-TV when Joanne Oppenheim related her experiences writing Dear Miss Breed: True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II and a Librarian Who Made a Difference to an audience that included many of Miss Breed’s children and their children at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles (www.janm.org). All of the above describes this wonderfully illustrated and written book in the barest terms. 

One of the subject headings suggested by the U.S. Library of Congress catalogers is “Juvenile Literature,” but it should be read by every one. It is in the Berkeley Public Library collections.  

DEAR MISS BREED: TRUE  

STORIES OF THE JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION  

DURING WORLD WAR II AND A LIBRARIAN WHO MADE A  

DIFFERENCE 

By Joanne Oppenheim. Foreword by Elizabeth Kikuchi Yamada. Afterword by Snowden Becker Scholastic Nonfiction, 2006.