Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet Home Again 1942

This is a story of a bloodshot first love between a Chinese boy, Henry Lee, and a Japanese girl, Keiko Okabe, in Seattle, Washington in the early years of the Second Globe State of war. Only more importantly, it is the story of the massive relocation and internment of the Japanese people, many of them 2nd-generation Americans, past the regime of the United States.

Following the Japanese assail on Pearl Harbor on December seven, 1941, there was a groovy deal of acrimony and fright towards Japanese Americans.

President Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 (Feb xix, 1942) authorized the Secretary of War and U.South. military machine commanders to declare areas of the United States every bit military areas "from which whatsoever or all persons may exist excluded," although it did not proper name any nationality or indigenous group. It was eventually applied to one-third of the land expanse of the U.Southward. (mostly in the West) and was used against those with "Foreign Enemy Ancestry" — Japanese, Italians, and Germans. In March of 1942, the War Relocation Potency was created to: "Have all people of Japanese descent into custody, environment them with troops, foreclose them from ownership state, and render them to their former homes at the close of the state of war."

Even before the Japanese-Americans were relocated, their livelihoods were seriously threatened when all accounts in American branches of Japanese banks were frozen.

On May nineteen, 1942, western Japanese Americans were forced to movement into relocation camps by Noncombatant Restrictive Order No. 1, 8 Fed. Reg. 982.

120,000 men, women, and children were rounded upwardly on the West Declension. Three categories of internees were created: Nisei (native U.South. citizens of Japanese immigrant parents), Issei (Japanese immigrants), and Kibei (native U.Due south. citizens educated largely in Japan). The internees were transported to one of x relocation centers in California, Utah, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming.

These Japanese Americans, one-half of whom were children, were incarcerated for up to 4 years, without due process of constabulary or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. Families were crammed into xx- by 25-foot rooms and forced to use communal bathrooms. No razors, scissors, or radios were allowed. Children attended War Relocation Authority schools.

On Dec 17, 1944
, Public Declaration No. 21, effective Jan 2, 1945, allowed evacuees to return home, just ahead of two new Supreme Courtroom decisions finding that citizens should be allowed to go home after proving their loyalty.
 Rejoining society was difficult for many. Each individual received a $25 payment and transportation tickets at the time of release. Many detainees discovered that their pre-1941 communities had vanished, and their homes and businesses were lost.

In Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, capacity motility dorsum and forth from the past to the present as nosotros learn the story of how Henry, at present 50-6, lost Keiko because of the relocation and because of his father's hatred for the Japanese. Henry had heard all his life most the invasion of the Japanese into Cathay, and subsequent murder and butchery past Japanese troops. Merely Henry was American, and he knew first-hand the cruelty and injustice of racial hatred, on account of the handling he himself received at his mostly white school. But his father would non eyebrow any fraternizing with "the enemy." Henry was rebellious, but not plenty to pause the chains of tradition and obligation that were so deeply impressed into his character. Part of his cloak-and-dagger love for of jazz was its freedom from form; the ability of the notes to take off and soar over the urban center in carefree, sensual delight; its absolute indifference to form, race, sex, or culture.

As the book begins, Henry'due south [Chinese] wife, Ethel, has been expressionless six months after a seven-year struggle with cancer. As the story progresses, we learn about Henry'southward son Marty, and their efforts to be a family later on Ethel'south decease. To Henry's chagrin, they echo the struggles Henry had with his own parents. And we acquire about Henry's past, and what happened to Keiko.

In the cease, Henry does "what he ever did, detect the sweet among the bitter."

Evaluation: If this volume doesn't cause you to break into the Kleenex box, you lot're a stronger person than I. Highly recommended!

Rating: 5/five

Published by Ballantine Books, 2009

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Source: https://rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/review-of-hotel-on-the-corner-of-bitter-and-sweet-by-jamie-ford/