Japanese – Dr JoAnn LoSavio

Facing the Mountain: An Inspiring Story of Japanese American Patriots in World War II by Daniel James Brown

I joined my local public library Adult Book Club and this was the first book I read with the group.

As an Asian and Asian American, I was immediately drawn the subject matter in Brown’s book. Given the rabid anti-Asian hate that has been on the rise in this country since Covid-19, non-fiction like this serves to do more than illuminate obscured histories; they emphasize the significance of diversity in American identity and entrench the idea that Asian American citizens — long held as “perpetual strangers/aliens” — belong in American society.

Facing The Mountain did not disappoint. While the book is a non-fiction history written for a popular press and a general adult audience, its methodology and archival research would more than satisfy any academic reviewer. Brown drew, not only from archives, but from oral histories and interviews to produce a historical monograph of significant breadth.

The book begins with the Japanese and Japanese American community in Hawai’i, but also explores the larger Japanese diaspora in the United States, on the mainland. Indeed, one of the highlights of the book is its attention to the diversity of voices within the Japanese American community: Mainlanders and Islanders came from very different cultures, sometimes held opposing views, and certainly cannot be assumed to be a monolithic society with a single voice. Its chapters explore the nuances of these different ideas within the community and how Japanese people across the United States, diverse in their social and economic class, gender, and generation, reacted to and handled the Presidential executive orders which sent them to internment camps and cast them out of American society as “enemy aliens.” Chapters document Japanese citizens’ resistance, compliance, sorrow, and joy, allowing the reader to witness the experience of WWII in many ways.

Facing The Mountain focuses heavily on the military experience as well, both domestically and abroad, which made the reading of this book novel for me. I do not typically gravitate toward military histories, finding many of them dry and clunky. But Brown turned this into a social history of the US military and the 442nd Regiment, making it a lively and very enjoyable read.

This was the very appealing part of Facing The Mountain for me; Brown made this political and military history feel intimate. It is, in fact, a prosopography. Facing the Mountain follows a cast of specific individuals and families who occupy different roles, careers, and places in the United States and American society. Through their experiences the readers views the entire landscape of the Japanese American perspective of WWII.

Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets by Kyo Maclear

This is a literary memoir grafted upon botanical themes of growth, seeding, seasons of harvest. Kyo begins with a desire to understand her complicated parents’ history and her mixed race identity. (Kyo is part Japanese, part white, and wholly British.) Kyo struggles with a reticent parent and the death of another.

As a result of a DNA test and through a careful pruning away of her parents’ past and the debris of their romance, Kyo uncovers an even more complicated undergrowth of family and connections. Their memoir throws into question the meanings of belonging, the bonds of love and how far those far are biological.

In some chapters Kyo refers to a woman whom her mother was friends with — perhaps Yoko Ono, though Kyo does not state this outright — and with whom they shared the connection of a child. The focal point here is not celebrity, but the degree to which an individual is a mother or a child to another.

The memoir also addresses the question of normativity and the ways in which women — especially Asian women — are captured and categorized in a Euro-White-centric society.

Maclear writes like a poet. The memoir reads like a poem, a long and winding one. It is lyrical in its delivery as well as in its perspective; the vines of connection are sinuous and undulating and tangled.