Chapter 11, A Home in the Desert Summary

Yuki and her family spend two days with thousands of other people aboard trains and busses traveling west to Topaz. During the trip, Emi becomes very ill. Yuki finds the transportation dusty, tiring and dreary. When the convoy reaches the gates of Topaz, a troop of local boy scouts parade to welcome the internees. Yuki notes that the boy scouts are covered with dust.

Topaz is only partially finished. The Sakane family is routed to a single eighteen-by-twenty-foot room where they are quartered for the foreseeable future. The room is in a tar-paper-covered building that has been hastily constructed. The building does not have plumbing, and each room has a single electric light bulb suspended from the ceiling. The Kurihara family is placed in a similar room and building close to the Sakane...