by Lynne Kutsukake,
read by Nancy Wu
This novel by debut author Lynne Kutsukake explores a little-used setting for historical fiction: post-World War II Japan, during its occupation by the United States. The story is told through five voices: twelve-year-old girls Fumi and Aya, their male teacher Kondo, Fumi's older sister Sumiko, and Cpl. Yoshitaka (Matt) Matsumoto. Aya is a Japanese-Canadian "repatriated" with her native Japanese father to his homeland after the war. Sumiko works as a bar girl, entertaining American occupation troops, to buy food and medicine for her family after her father's bookstore is bombed out. Kondo moonlights translating and writing letters in English, mostly for bar girls whose American boyfriends have gone home. And Matt, a Japanese-American whose family was interred in the war (despite his older brother earning a Purple Heart when killed in action in Europe), works for General Douglas MacArthur's office as a translator.
Sumiko goes missing and Fumi gets the English-speaking Aya to write a letter for her to MacArthur asking for his help finding her. The girls end up giving the letter to Matt, and he and an office typist, Nancy (another Japanese-American, but one still trapped in Japan since Pearl Harbor) decide to help the girls find Sumiko. Kondo gets pulled into their story as well.
In an article, the Japanese-Canadian Kutsukake said,
The idea came from a book called Dear General MacArthur, written by Japanese historian RinjirÅ Sodei. The book is a study of the letters written to General MacArthur during the occupation period...So I began thinking about what kind of person would write a letter to General MacArthur.... I wanted the person to be a 12-year-old because General MacArthur quite famously called Japan "a nation of 12-year-olds."
Nancy Wu is an appropriate narrator for the audiobook and makes the 12-year-olds sound just their ages. This was a great debut novel about a time-and-place setting that I knew little about.
© Amanda Pape - 2017
[The e-audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library.]
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