“The Red Kimono” captures the tragedy of internment, and the larger context of racial injustice
For a long time, there were painfully few novels that were about the experience of Japanese Americans who were put into concentration camps during World War II. Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston which was published in 1973, stood alone, unless you counted the powerful post-war story of John Okada’s 1957 classic, No-No Boy.
In recent years, there have been more fictional works set during internment, most notably David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars, but also Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto’s Why She Left Us, K.P. …