Evergreen by Naomi Hirahara
What’s it About?
A Japanese American nurse’s aide navigates the dangers of post-WWII and post-Manzanar life as she attempts to find justice for a broken family.
Naomi Hirahara is the Babe Ruth of authors hitting home runs out of the park with each book reaching an ever-widening circle of readers. Evergreen (Soho Crime) continues the story of the Ito Family introduced in Clark and Division. After enduring stress, deprivation and hardships during two years of imprisonment in Manzanar War Relocation Center located near Lone Pine in Owens Valley about 225 miles north of Los Angeles.
Aki Ito and her parents are allowed to move to Chicago in 1944 to join her older sister Rose. The night before they are to be reunited, Rose is killed by being pushed or jumping in front of a subway train. Aki cannot believe her vibrant, optimistic sister would commit suicide, dedicating herself to seek the truth and uncover a murderer.
This is the first of this Edgar-winning author’s historical fiction mysteries set during WWII and shortly thereafter. She may require a trophy room for all the awards she has received. For this book alone, they included The Mary Higgins Clark Award, The Lefty for Best Historical Novel, and the New York Times Best Mystery Novel of 2021, among others. The book titles refer to the street names where the family lived in the Japantown neighborhoods of Chicago (Clark and Division) and after their return home to Los Angeles (Evergreen).
It is a riveting, must-read, poignant work that deftly draws from actual real-life experiences that shattered well-established communities and created deep-seated mistrust of their government as well as some former friends and neighbors following their shameful imprisonment during the war years.
Dark History of Discrimination and Prejudice
Evergreen is also finely written and a well-plotted mystery involving murder and neighborhood gangsters. In 1946, the Ito family and their fellow formerly incarcerated Japanese Americans are allowed to return to their West Coast homes after several years spent in horrific Relocation centers. The majority possess little more than the clothes on their backs, limited funds and reduced opportunities for gainful employment.
Through no fault of their own, these detainees, the majority of whom were US citizens, would continue to face discrimination and prejudice as they struggle to readjust to living in a free society. They encounter a myriad of difficulties and new postwar challenges in rebuilding their lives and attempting to resume work and careers. Many were homeless, without jobs, and largely had been robbed of the possessions they left in storage. “We didn’t think you would be back,” was a phrase often heard by the returnees. In the Little Tokyo or Japantown area of Los Angeles, the old neighborhood was now called “Bronzetown” because of the large number of African Americans who had moved to LA for wartime factory work. Unemployment was on the rise with factory layoffs. Housing was scarce, making rents higher, as were the cost of food and household goods.
In 1942, Aki’s parents hurriedly sold their home, car and business just a few days after receiving the notification of forced relocation. They had few possessions remaining and weren’t sure of what would await them upon their return to Los Angeles. They had been able to save some money from work in Chicago. Fortunately, a trustworthy friend had safely stored their few precious heirlooms and household goods. Aki found a small, affordable home requiring minor maintenance for rent from an older Jewish landlord who had lost relatives in Concentration Camps and understood their situation.
Empathetic to their plight, he offered to sell the house to them when her husband Art Nakasone returned from his US Army service. Art’s family lived in Chicago where the young couple married shortly before he was shipped overseas. There had been no time for a honeymoon. Aki and Art planned to live with her parents for the foreseeable future. The couple has spent more time apart than together and their reunion is fraught with anxiety. He may be a little shell-shocked, battle weary and finding it difficult to adjust to civilian life. Aki is shocked to find her husband has acquired habits of smoking, drinking, and cursing and has become uncharacteristically irritable as well as frustrated from a lack of work.
Art fought with the “Go for Broke” battalion; the racially segregated 1400 strong Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion with their chosen motto of “Remember Pearl Harbor”. Following training, they were first deployed to the Italian Campaign fighting their way up the boot to Monte Cassino, Anzio and on to Rome. In August, 1944, the 100th was integrated into the 442nd Infantry Regiment in time for the invasion of Southern France. In 20 months, these tough, battle-hardened, determined Japanese Americans fought in six campaigns earning Presidential Unit Citations, six Distinguished Service Crosses and numerous other medals and decorations. Some 20,000 Nisei bravely served in the US Military during WWII.
Illicit Love Affairs, Murder and Mobsters
Art Nakasone enlisted as soon as it was permitted and fought alongside his best friend Babe Watanabe who is at the heart of the mystery Aki seeks to solve in Evergreen. Babe received medals for bravery, a Purple Heart for a head injury and was sent stateside to California for treatment at an Army Psychiatric Hospital. Readjustment is particularly difficult for him with his mood swings and his life complicated by an illicit love affair with a lovely, educated Caucasian woman. He had reconnected with his old friend Art but not yet with the Ito family. Aki was the first of the family to find gainful employment as an experienced nurse’s aide in the overburdened Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights.
When an elderly Issei man named Haruki Watanabe was admitted with injuries that looked like signs of elder abuse, Aki is concerned his now unstable son had administered a beating. Not long after this incident, Haruki is found in his apartment dead of gunshot wounds and possibly the victim of a robbery. Babe has gone to ground, thus becoming the obvious suspect. His devoted friend Art can’t believe his friend is capable of violence perpetrated against family and civilians in general.
As Aki is drawn into investigating the crime, she learns Haruki was not the gentle old man she assumed him to be but had been involved in the numbers game racket run by mobsters. She puts herself in danger as she divides her time between work, family, reconnecting with her husband and crime-solving. Evergreen delivers a potent story expertly balancing between an exciting mystery and a nuanced, richly detailed history in a postwar urban Los Angeles setting.
Perfect for Book Clubs and History Buffs
Evergreen is an ideal selection for book club groups wishing to learn more about the Japanese American experience during and after WWII. Fans of other great storytellers like Sujata Massey, Julie Otsuka, and Jamie Ford will enjoy this latest novel from Naomi Hirahara. Avid, long-time readers of this enthralling author will undoubtedly cheer and as usual clamor for more. I have already savored the Mas Arai, Leila Santiago and Ellie Rush mystery series, read selections of her work from The Rafu Shimpo newspaper where she served as editor for many years and frequently visit her website.
Naomi Hirahara is a Stanford University graduate, born in Pasadena, California, descended from a Nisei father and Issei mother, both survivors of the Hiroshima bombing that led to the end of the war. Like her beloved character Mas Arai, her father had been taken for a visit to Japan as an infant and was unable to return to the USA after war was declared.
Throughout her career as an editor, educator and author, she has researched and written both fiction and nonfiction about the Japanese American experiences. One of her notable nonfiction works is Life after Manzanar. Many authors have written about the internment camps including actor George Takei (Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu) who collaboratively wrote the graphic novel/memoir They Called Us Enemy based on his childhood years in Rohwer (Arkansas) and later Tule Lake (California) War Relocation Centers.
Historical Context for the Novel
Two months after the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized Executive Order 9066. This provided for the forceful removal and relocation of all persons of Japanese descent (primarily those residing on the west coast) labeled as “enemy aliens” and deemed to be a threat to national security to camps situated further inland. Covertly assisted by the Census Bureau, it resulted in the incarceration of over 125,000 people ranging in age from newborn infants to the elderly to 75 sites.
Fully two-thirds of the Japanese Americans were U.S. Citizens, born and raised in America. They were Nisei or second-generation, American-born and Sansei, their third-generation children. Issei, the first-generation immigrants born in Japan were by law ineligible for U.S. Citizenship, although many had lived in the United States for decades.
Territorial Hawaii was under martial law and fewer than 1800 of its approximately 150,000 Japanese American population were incarcerated. California’s interpretation of the order was the harshest, defining anyone with 1/16th or more Japanese lineage as those who should be relocated. Approximately 5,500 community leaders on the mainland and in US territories were arrested within days following Pearl Harbor and were already in custody. In comparison, relatively few, about 10,000 Americans of German or Italian descent from all of USA were placed in detention camps.
Despite Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and other bureaus’ January 1942 reports to the President that found little evidence of disloyalty or threats of insurrection, relocation was swiftly executed. It began with Civilian Exclusion Order #1 on March 24, 1942 issued to the 227 Japanese Americans residing on Bainbridge Island, Washington who were given a mere six days to prepare to depart to Manzanar. Other states, California included, were even more draconian allowing only 48 hours’ notice before being transported.
The suspicion of a Japanese full-scale invasion of the West Coast along with racial prejudice heightened fears of the existing community. In the immediate aftermath of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, public opinion not surprisingly supported the internment policy. Perhaps less patriotically motivated, many farmers supported it as it removed their competitors and allowed them to acquire additional acreage, farms and markets at a sharp discount.
Even more egregiously, by February 1942, California’s Attorney General and future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren was among those working in favor of removing all persons with Japanese heritage from the Pacific coastline. Altogether 108 orders were issued by the Western Defense Command with the relocation completed in August 1942.
Those interned protested their loyalty; many men were eager to volunteer their service in the US Military but were barred from enlisting until 1943 when the US Army began recruiting Nisei to serve in all Japanese American companies, primarily in the European Theater. By the war’s end, 20,000 had served their country by engaging in some fierce fighting in units such as the “Go For Broke.”
When Executive Order 9066 was enacted, there were no immediate plans for where to house the detainees. Initially, they were sent to temporary camps called Civilian Assembly Centers that were frequently located at fairgrounds, race tracks, stables and former migrant worker camps. Most were then transported to hastily constructed barracks in 10 locations dubbed Relocation or Internment Camps in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. These inland areas were desolate and isolated from major population centers. The camps were surrounded by barbed wire with armed guards to contain all ages of these mostly US citizens.
In the late 1970’s, President Jimmy Carter appointed an investigative Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Citizens (CWRIC). In 1983, they issued a report concluding the incarceration had largely been due to racism with the recommendation reparations be paid to the former detainees.
President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which officially apologized on behalf of the government and authorized a payment of $20,000 to those who had been imprisoned and remained alive when the act was passed. Approximately $1.6 billion was paid to over 82,000 Japanese Americans by 1992.
Publish Date: 8/1/2023
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery
Author: Naomi Hirahara
Page Count: 312 pages
Publisher: Soho Crime
ISBN: 9781641293594
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