A story of loyalty told in striking drawings

We Are Not Strangers, Josh Tuininga, Abrams Comicarts, New York, $24,99.

By Daniel Santacruz

Through eye-catching drawings, author Josh Tuininga delves into the life of two unlikely characters, Marco Calvo, a second-generation Sefardic Jew with ancestors from Turkey, and Sam Akiyama, an American of Japanese descent from the Seattle area.

Tuininga, a designer and artist who lives in Washington State, has given us an amazing graphic novel, inspired by a true story. By using a comic book-style, short sentences and realistic drawings, some full-page, he has made a sad chapter of American history accessible.

To clarify things for the reader, at the beginning of the book he writes that, while the project was inspired by the oral histories of many, “it’s important to note that this is work of fiction.” To tell an authentic story, he adds, he made sure that the locations, dialogue and scenes portrayed were as close to real life as possible.

“I weaved together historical accounts from my interviews and historical archives but the characters and narrative I’ve created are fictional,” he added.

The story begins on December 23, 1987, at the Sephardic Bikur Holim Synagogue, in Seattle, during the funeral of Marco’s grandfather, also known as Papoo. Besides the familiar faces of relatives and friends who came to pay their respects, he notices people he doesn’t recognize. Who are those strangers who knew him so well?

At the funeral Marco finds out how extraordinary Papoo’s life was. And it is one of those strangers, who lives in another neighborhood, who shares with Marco details of what the man did for him and his community.

To better understand who Papoo was, the author takes us to his early life on the island of Marmara, in Turkey, a country struggling from the impact of Word War I.

Papoo was born in 1901 and, according to family lore, he fled the Ottoman Empire with a lute, a fishing knife and a Fez hat, ending up in Seattle, where he started a family and a business.

In 1942 Marco’s life intersects with that of Sam, owner of a fish market whom he met while fishing.

After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, hatred for all things Japanese peaked in the United States in February 1942 when President Roosevelt issued an executive order removing all those of Japanese descent from the West coast, including America-born citizens, to temporary “assembly centers”, fearing an invasion of the Japanese military.

Sam and his family are sent to an internment camp in Idaho called Minidoka. Back in Seattle, Marco devotes himself to looking after his friend’s businesses and house. From 1942 to 1946, the US government set up camps in eight states, where about 120,000 Japanese Americans and residents of Japanese ancestry were incarcerated.

Marco’s Ladino-speaking mother, Noni, is a minor character in the book. She arrives from Turkey in 1939, in the middle of a political upheaval in Europe, and moves in with Marco and his family.

The Ladino expressions used by Noni, Marco and his wife, like savrozo (delicious), come kon gana (bon apetit) and kon adjile (with speed) are translated into English and appear at the bottom of the pages where they are spoken.

Ken Mochizuki, author of Those Who Helped Us and Baseball Saved Us, and Devin. E. Naar, profesor of Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington, offer their knowledge of both the Japanese and Jewish communities in essays that put the novel in a historical context.

As professor Naaar, writes, We Are Not Strangers uncovers “the complex dynamics at play in the context of a dark period in U.S. history through the reimagining of the specific and locally rooted perspectives of Sephardic Jewish and Japanese families whose fates would be inextricably linked even if not acknowledged publicly—until now.”

Photographs of Seattle’s Central District Historical Landmarks, where most of the book is set—such as Pike Place Market, the Ferry dock Market and the Japanese Learning School—are accompanied by a short description of each place.

Sephardic Bikur Holim Synagogue (Joe Mabel).

June 30, 2026.

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