Gina the Bonsai Girl, the newest volume in my series, Once Upon a Time in the Texas Panhandle, tells two love stories. A single mother finds love again after a decade as war-widow. Her preadolescent daughter falls in love for the first time. The historical background is World War II and the post-war decades. The mother, Regina Walker, was married to Tim Umezawa, who died in Italy while serving in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the U.S. Army’s all Japanese American unit that fought in Europe. In 1954, Regina returns to Mackenzie, Texas, from San Diego, California, with her twelve-year-old daughter, Gina, who is half-Japanese. Gina must deal with the town’s prejudice against Asians, especially against persons ethnically Japanese.
I never heard of the 442nd until I came to California in 1970. I was born in Texas in 1941, several months before Pearl Harbor. My only memory of the war years is going with my mother to the Amarillo, Texas, Santa Fe train station to see off my godmother, a nurse who was dressed in her U.S. Army olive green uniform. My first memories of the post-war years are of two young neighborhood veterans who served in the Pacific Theater wildly waving their prized war trophies: Japanese rising-sun battle flags. As a small child I heard war-stories from returning veterans. One of the Garvey brothers, who had been a Marine, told of hitting the beach of a small Pacific island and then running across to the other side while shooting at entrenched Japanese infantry. When he got to the other side and turned around, he was the only member of his unit still alive. My sixth-grade teacher was a mechanic in the U.S. Army Air Force stationed at Pearl Harbor when it was struck. He gave us his first-hand account of the Japanese attack. I saw many movies and read dozens of comic books that depicted battles of Americans slaughtering the barbarian “Japs.” But I never heard of the 442nd Japanese American unit until I came to California.
Why is that? Amarillo is in the center of the United States, a thousand miles from either coast. When I was growing up there, I never remember seeing a single Japanese face. Many young men from the Panhandle like my three maternal uncles went to California, joined the navy and marines, and fought against the Japanese. They returned home with their prejudices reinforced. I heard of one veteran from my town who tried to bring his Japanese war-bride home. They were quickly run out of town. Veterans who returned home from the war in Europe never talked about seeing Japanese Americans in American uniform—members of the 442nd. I never heard mention of “relocation camps” for Japanese immigrants and their American-born children, or that the 442nd was composed of young men who were drafted from these camps while their families remained imprisoned behind barbed wire in isolated places with U.S. Army soldiers on guard towers manning machine guns aimed at persons who were legal immigrants and fellow American citizens.
Why is that? The Japanese Americans who served in World War II were members of what Tom Brokaw named, “The Greatest Generation.” In total, 14,000 men served in the 442nd. They earned 9,486 Purple Hearts. Twenty-one of their members were awarded Medals of Honor. Yet when they returned home to America after the war, they were met with “No Japs Wanted” signs. Their service was ignored and soon forgotten. Their families’ confiscated properties were not restored nor compensated for. My novel tries to understand why that was and shows the long-term consequences for Japanese American families from wartime hysteria and post-war hatred.