Picture Bride: 1905-1941 Japan and Hawaii –
From the moment we meet Haru, we fall in love with her. We despair for her as she contemplates suicide rather than be sold into prostitution, cheer for her as she finds refuge in a Hiroshima Buddhist temple, then through her teenage eyes witness the ascendant emperor-worshiping Shintoism giving rise to Japan’s military caste.
Betrayed by her best friend, Haru flees to Hawaii as a picture bride. We share her frustration confronting her husband’s stubbornness to maintain his Japanese language school curriculum that incites doubts of Japanese loyalty. We feel her pain of 1924 immigration humiliation. We read Haru’s oldest son newspaper reports trying to make sense of the Massie trial inspired murder of a falsely accused Japanese laborer that rips the racial veneer of Hawaii asunder.
We meet Haru’s daughter (based on a true life figure) who becomes an au pair in the home of the FBI agent assigned to prepare the internment of all Japanese in Hawaii when the expected war with Japan begins. We are intrigued by how she led the FBI agent to ignore Hoover’s orders. We witness pre-war Japan through Haru’s son drafted by the Imperial army and her daughter working for Dentsu.
