コウジ・スティーブン・サカイ

私は子供の頃から、自分がいわゆる｢アメリカ人｣に見えないことを自覚していました。そのため、時々、自分がアメリカ人ではないと感じることがありました。そのようなことを誰かに面と向かって言われた経験はありませんが、白人ではないアメリカ人であれば、このような感覚に陥ったことがあると思います。また、子供だった私は、自分はたまたまアメリカに住んでいる日本人なんだという感覚もありました。ですので、7歳の時、家族と初めて日本を訪れることになった時、私はとても楽しみにしていました。日本へ行けば、確固たる「日本人」というアイデンティティを獲得できるとすっかり思い込んで（またはそうなればいいと強く願って）いたからです。

そんな思いとは裏腹に、日本に到着した私はすっかり落胆してしまいました ...

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Eddy’s life changed right away. He stopped going to school and his family wasn’t allowed to leave the house at night. Eddy spent the first couple of days playing with Kuma and with Julia once she got back from school.

Eddy noticed a lot of strangers were going in and out of his front door and how things around the house were slowly disappearing. He found his mom arguing with a man over a brand new vacuum cleaner his dad had bought her for their anniversary.

“This is brand new and worth five times what ...

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Eddy was a Nisei, which means second generation Japanese. In other words, his parents were born in Japan, but he was born in America and was therefore a citizen. Because he had never visited his parent’s homeland and since he couldn’t speak a word of their native language, he always felt more American than Japanese.

But when others saw Eddy, they saw the enemy. At school, the other kids wouldn’t let him play baseball during recess and the teachers stopped calling on him in class. They all blamed him for what Japan had done ...

Eddy Murakami’s 10th birthday was on July 4, 1941 and he knew he wanted a dog. He even had a name picked out already. The dog’s name was going to be Kuma, which in Japanese means, “bear.”

For the entire month of June, Eddy begged his dad to get him a dog.

“Dad, can I have a dog?” Eddy would ask every time he saw him.

And every time Mr. Murakami would say, “No.”

But Eddy wasn’t the kind of boy that took no for an answer. So he kept asking.

By the time his birthday finally ...

How Much Do You Love Me? by Paul Mark Tag is the kind of novel I usually hate.

Here’s the Amazon.com synopsis:

It’s December 1941, and the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. Politicians fuel anti-Japanese hysteria and campaign to segregate Japanese Americans. During this period of hate and racial frenzy, Keiko and James, a Japanese American and a Caucasian, fall in love and marry. Before long, James goes off to war and Keiko to an internment camp.

Sixty years later, Keiko has a stroke and lies near death, while James suffers from Alzheimer’s. Coincidentally, a chance ...