The Bracelet

“The Bracelet” by Yoshiko Uchida is a short story about Ruri, a Japanese girl in WWII being taken from her home to a concentration camp, and a bracelet her best friend Laurie gave to her before she moved to the concentration camp. Before Ruri is forced to leave, her best friend gives her a bracelet and makes her promise to never take it off. But on the way to the concentration camp, Ruri realizes that she lost the bracelet, and she panics. From the thoughts Ruri has, readers can learn that Yoshiko Uchida shows that all it takes to truly remember someone is to remember them in one’s heart.

To start the story off, Ruri is sad because she has to go to a concentration camp with everyone else with a Japanese face. She begins to cry before her best friend Laurie comes over with a bracelet to give her. Laurie makes Ruri promise to never take it off so she would never forget her. “She thrust the present at me and told me it was something to take to camp. ‘It’s a bracelet,’ she said before I could open the package.” (Page 24) Laurie gives Ruri a bracelet to remember her by. This is important to Ruri because she wants to remember her best friend, so she puts on the

Knowing this, Ruri searches everywhere for the bracelet, because it was one thing Ruri felt like she absolutely couldn’t lose. “I thought of what I had promised Laurie, I wasn’t ever going to take the bracelet off, not even when I went to take a shower. And now I had lost it on the first day of camp. I wanted to cry.” (Page 27) Ruri and her family had set up the last cot when Ruri realized that she had lost Laurie’s bracelet. This shows importance because Ruri had promised Laurie that she would never take it off, and now she was freaking out because she had lost it. Ruri losing the bracelet underscores the theme of remembrance and how she doesn’t want to forget