The title of this episodic novel, What Pearl Harbor Wrought, comes from the fact that it was the trauma of the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, that shaped the lives of the author and so many others of the World War II generation - those of Japanese Americans in its own unique way.
Other minorities also faced questions on their rights and identity as Americans. For the Nikkei, however, the questions became particularly poignant during World War II when all persons with Japanese blood, be they citizens or not, were removed from their homes on the U.S. West Coast and detained in barbed-wired "relocation centers" in desolate parts of America. Dreams were shattered, homes were lost, livelihoods taken away.
This episodic novel is based on the author's observations while growing up in California, experiencing the trauma of Pearl Harbor and the internment, and then serving in the U.S. Army in occupied Japan and in the Korean conflict. This was followed by a return to Tokyo as a civilian to try to be but realizing that he could not be "just another Japanese," then life in London, where again he experienced the uniqueness of being - in the eyes of others - neither fully "American" nor fully "Japanese."
The author hopes his efforts will give his children and grandchildren a sense of their heritage.
Aiko Konoshima,
from the Introduction to What Pearl Harbor Wrought
