Edward Miyakawa

This year I finally decided to read “Tule Lake” by Ed Miyakawa. I’ve known about the book for some decades, since I went to school with the Miyakawas’ children and through one of their kids being involved with a school club that my mother was the staff advisor for, I also shared some meals with the Miyakawa family.

“Tule Lake” is a novel based on Miyakawa’s experiences as a boy in the Tule Lake internment camp during World War II, when the U.S. locked up most Japanese people in the U.S. whether they were Japanese or U.S. citizens, in camps.

Since the book is written in first person, and I knew the author, I had a lot of trouble at first separating the author from the main character, Ben. I had to put it down for a few months, then pick it up again.

Ben is a young man, having finished college and law school when the novel begins. His family is settled in Sacramento, California in a community of several generations of Japanese people, some farmers, some small business owners and some retired, where almost everyone knows everyone else.

But then Japan attacks the United States, and the government decides to lock up all the Japanese people, without evidence that any of them have anything to do with Japan’s attack or spies or any such thing, in concentration camps.

The book describes some of life in the Tule Lake camp. How the days go, what the people do to pass the time. Then it builds up to tense situations when the U.S. government wants every inmate to declare if they are or are not loyal to the United States. This issue starts dividing the people in the camp, with the main character, Ben, not wanting to answer it at all, because he doesn’t believe anyone should be forced to.

A group of camp inmates starts declaring their loyalty to Japan and wishing to repatriate to Japan, and also force others to follow them, attacking those who are most vocal about not doing so, and forcing the barbers to give Japanese army style hair cuts to all men and things.

Near the end, when the government is ready to let some of the people out, some want to go, some don’t. Some, especially the elderly, feel safer in the camp than out in the United States proper, where they fear racism, and where many of the no longer have their old homes, their old businesses and their old possessions.

Despite taking place in the 1940s, it doesn’t particularly feel dated, since the focus is on the people and their relationships and philosophies, rather than on the items and things that existed back then.

Overall, it’s an okay novel, but more poignant knowing it’s based on experiences the author, a man I knew as a teenager, actually lived through.… (mehr)