Pamela Rotner Sakamoto > Quotes

“Each person, caught up in the moment, had no inkling that this was the last time this group would ever be together.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“Yet, as the Fourth of July approached, the Tulare residents welcomed the distraction and took to their beloved holiday with gusto. They organized a full schedule of events, including a three-quarter-mile-long parade, sumo and judo contests, relays, and a tug-of-war.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“One day, a check for seventy-five dollars arrived from the Mexican man to whom Harry had sold his truck before boarding the train for Tulare.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“March 3, 1938, he strode across the auditorium, bowed to the principal, and accepted his high school diploma. Harry was among the youngest nisei in Sanyō’s graduating class. Harry had kept his end of the bargain. Now his mother was obligated to keep hers.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“in one incident, the American Legion removed the names of sixteen nisei soldiers from its county honor roll in Hood River, Oregon. One of the nisei was a linguist in the Pacific Theater named Frank Hachiya.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“Plants were blooming in strange profusion.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“Back in Hood River, there was a public outcry. The late Frank Hachiya’s name was hastily repainted on the county honor roll.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“By 1925, the number of Japanese farms in the state fell to 246, from 699 five years earlier; total acreage dropped almost two-thirds, from 25,340 to 7,030 acres.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“On the night of July 7, 1937, Japanese and Chinese forces near the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing clashed, the two sides firing on one another. War between China and Japan, simmering since Japan’s 1931 incursion into Manchuria, erupted.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“Whoever heard of a soldier going on a landing with a typewriter?”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“World War I veterans marched with pride.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“Hiroshima’s economy, once devoted to producing lacquered umbrellas and farming seaweed, oysters, lemons, and persimmons, now depended more and more on army and navy expenditures.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“An American would not be stripped of his citizenship, he verified, simply by living in Japan.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“759 had been killed and four Japanese captured.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“When the time came, they drove 170 miles over the Tehachapi Mountains at a “victory speed” of 35 miles an hour on rationed gas and tires.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“Graced by a large front yard, backed by persimmon, loquat, pomegranate, and fig trees, the house was designed to accommodate Katsuji’s Victorian furnishings, Kinu’s wood-and-coal-burning cast-iron stove, and the flush toilet Harry had always wanted.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“while quietly purchasing land in the names of their American children, who would legally cultivate the plots upon turning twenty-one. But in 1923 an amendment passed, in the wake of the devastating 1922 Supreme Court decision denying issei citizenship, which eliminated this loophole. Malcolm Douglas, the prosecuting attorney for King County, encompassing the White River Valley, vowed to pursue violators with zeal. If he proved successful, he proclaimed in the Auburn Globe-Republican, he would drive Japanese from the county.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“This letter provided peace of mind, for Harry’s schooling was predicated on service in the Japanese Imperial Army. “Unique” among nations, diplomat historian Ulrich Straus would write, Japan had instituted requisite military training in secondary school that was led by active-duty officers. Harry served under a lieutenant colonel, warrant officer, and master sergeant. Harry, an avowed American citizen, would undergo four years of Japanese-style ROTC training, but this was not the same as serving in the Japanese army.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“Although Victor was the least comfortable in the United States, as a dual citizen he faced the almost certain prospect of being drafted into the Japanese army. Like his father three decades before him, staying abroad kept a mandatory sentence at bay.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“assimilated. So it was”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“At the time, it cost 1,000 yen to build a house in Japan, and Kinu had spent 936 yen on tickets. Their single trip was virtually one house, but her remaining funds would go far in Hiroshima.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“while quietly purchasing land in the names of their American children, who would legally cultivate the plots upon turning twenty-one. But in 1923 an amendment passed, in the wake of the devastating 1922 Supreme Court decision denying issei citizenship, which eliminated this loophole.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“Just when Victor was finally regaining his stride after interrupted lives in two countries, he was drafted. In November 1935, he was officially assigned to the First Reserves and ordered to report to duty on December 1. He was twenty-one.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“One of the first he interviewed was voluble and wounded. Admitted to a Japanese camp hospital for his injuries before he fled and surrendered, he had overheard instructions that patients who were not mobile should be lethally injected when the troops withdrew. The officer had witnessed Japanese nurses going from bed to bed with syringes, carrying out what they had likely been told was anrakushi (euthanasia).”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“I had wondered how Harry could enlist in a military that had imprisoned him and would then send him into possible combat against his brothers.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“Kinu did worry, though, about the ships of returning soldiers, many prostrate with contagious dysentery from China’s putrefying trenches.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“His suicide did not redeem him;”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“Although Japan was already at war with China, the intended target of the drills was the United States, viewed as the greatest threat to Japanese expansionist goals.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“their skin turned particularly jaundiced from the antimalarial tablet that they downed daily at the chow line.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

“In late May, several Japanese cities considered possible targets for a remarkable weapon were deemed exempt from B-29 air raids.”
― Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds