GO & DO Book Signings
With Jan Morrill
When: 6 p.m. May 7 at the
Fayetteville Public Library;
10 a.m. May 10 at Barnes
& Noble Booksellers in
Fayetteville
Information: uapress.comThe story of 9-year-old Sachiko, her 17-year-old brother Nobu and their World War II internment in a relocation camp in rural eastern Arkansasis fiction.
The story of Fayetteville author Jan Morrill and her mother’s internment at relocation camps in Tule Lake, Calif., and Topaz, Utah, is the truth - and the fact that 7-year-old Miyoko Sasakiwas an American citizen is the most shocking part of that truth.
Morrill set out to write her mother’s story, “but with my mom still living, I couldn’t completely let go and write what I wanted to write. So I fictionalized it instead,” she said.
“Sachi is based on my mother.”
Incidents in “The Red Kimono” are also rooted in reality. Morrill’s grandfather was murdered by two African-American teenagers just after he was released from the internment camp.
“In real life, they killed him for about $8 in his pocket,” she said.
In the plot, the murder was related to the war. Terrence, Nobu’s friend and the book’s antagonist, lost his father in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The story - and a planned sequel - also follow his journey through racism to forgiveness, Morrill said.
New York Times best-selling author Jodi Thomas called “The Red Kimono” “a slice of American history beautifully told by three young Americans coming of age in a turbulent time.” THE HISTORY
Morrill’s grandmother came to the United States from Japan in 1915, her grandfather in 1917. Her mother was born in the United States. Morrill grew up knowing that much.
But she knew little about their relocation during World War II until she started doing research for her book.
“The generations that were in the internment camps didn’t talk much about it,” she said. “They were kind of ashamed, even though they didn’t do anything to cause it.
“She took us to see Tule Lake once,” she added. “It was just barren land by the time we saw it. I remember her standing there crying.
“One thing she did tell me that really struck me,” Morrill pointed out, “was that even though I was only half Japanese - and didn’t speak Japanese or know anything about Japan - I would have been in a camp, too.” THE CAMPS
According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, the Rohwer Relocation Center in Desha County and the Jerome Relocation Center in Chicot and Drew counties - the settings used in Morrill’s book - were built in 1942 to house some 16,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Rohwer was the last one of the 10 camps nationwide to close, on Nov. 30, 1945.
All told, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, signed Feb. 19, 1942, forcibly relocated and incarcerated nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans as potential spiesand saboteurs.
The story of the Japanese Americans housed in Arkansas is now being told at the Jerome Rohwer Interpretative Museum and Visitor Center, which opened April 16 in the old Missouri-Pacific Railroad Depot in downtown McGehee.
Cindy Chandler Smith of McGehee, the dedication day chairman, explains that the central exhibit, “Life Interrupted: Against Their Will,” was created by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and had been stored at the Delta Cultural Center in Helena. The city of McGehee raised close to $1 million to renovate the depot, she said, the exhibit has been relocated, and now the museum will work to collect other artifacts - war bonds, rationing coupons - to tell the story of life outside the internmentcamp.
“And as internees come back to visit, they’re bringing memorabilia to us,” she added. “We hope to have more things to go along with the exhibit as time goes on.”
Also unveiled in April was wayside signage at the Rohwer camp location, where nothing remains standing except a smokestack. Created by Arkansas State University and narrated by “Star Trek” actor George Takei, who was a resident at the Rohwer camp, the historical markers show the camp layout and tell the story of the internment and the adjacent cemetery where 24 Japanese Americans are buried.
THE BOOK
Although they didn’t discuss the internment camps, Morrill said her mother was proud of her Japanese heritage, as is she. But it wasn’t always easy for a 5-foot-8 American girl with Asian features.
“I never quite fit in with either family. My dad is a 6-foot-4 redhead, and I look almost just like my mom, actually - so I stuck out like a sore thumb either way,” she said. “But as I got older, I learned to appreciate the things that made me feel different. I’m very proud of and appreciate my Japanese heritage. It’s a veryproud culture.”
As an adult, Morrill has traveled to Japan twice, once with her mother and sisters. Her mother hadn’t been there in decades, she said, “so when we went back with her, it was very interesting.”
But Morrill didn’t start writing seriously until she remarried and moved to Arkansas.
“I was fortunately able to not work anymore, and I’d always loved to write,” she said. “It was a great opportunity.”
The book was published in February by the University of Arkansas Press, which chooses to print only about 20 titles a year and almost never fiction.
“We are interested in the civil rights history of Arkansas,” said Larry Malley, director of University Press. “And when her proposal came in to me, we had already had one of our all-time most successful books, “Camp 9,” about the internment camps.
“It is totally unusual for us to do fiction, and I had to talk myself into publishing it, but this was different.”
“The Red Kimono,” Malley said, “has done nicely.”
“I didn’t ask my mom if she wanted to read the book until the very end because it did upset her so much to talk about it,” Morrill said.
“I was afraid it would bring back too many memories.
But she did read it when told her I found a publisher.
“She’s not a reader, but I put it on her iPad, and every time I would visit, I’d find her just glued to that iPad reading it. She ended up being one of my best editors because she had actually been there. She refined some of the parts about Japanese culture, little touches that didn’t make a lot of difference to the story but meant a lot to me because she was really into it.”
Morrill has been traveling to signings since the book came out and said one question comes up frequently.
“A lot of people ask if I felt anger or grief,” she said.
“I do feel sadness, but the way it affected me most was making me open my eyes to things like 911. We were all so afraid of the Muslims after (Sept. 11, 2001) that I could understand the fear we had toward the Japanese. But what a slippery slope fear can put us on.”
Style, Pages 27 on 05/02/2013