Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

In this sweeping portrait, historian Sakamoto explores family dynamics as she profiles U.S. Army Col. Harry Fukuhara (1920–2015), an eminent linguist whose brother served in Hirohito’s army during WWII. Sakamoto draws on extensive interviews as well as a long acquaintance with her subject and his family to infuse the narrative with great poignancy. Opening in Seattle with the 1929 stock market crash, Sakamoto’s account introduces Harry, his brothers Frank and Pierce, and their sister, Mary, whose world crashed with the 1933 death of their father. Desperate, their mother whisks them to her hometown of Hiroshima, where the children suffer culture shock. Unable to assimilate, Harry returns to the U.S. in 1938, a year and a half after Mary does, but both of them end up in an Arizona internment camp in 1942. When Army recruiters scouted the camp looking for translators, Harry passed the test, embarking on a career in U.S. military intelligence. Despite their efforts to avoid battle, his brothers in Japan were drafted in a 1945 last-ditch “mass mobilization.” Frank’s experiences as a teenager in the Japanese Army provide the counterpoint to Harry’s wartime reminiscences. Sakamoto presents a gripping story of colorful individuals, though her novelistic tone often undermines the gravity of the story she relates. (Jan.)