The Red Kimono: A Novel

by Jan Morrill

Overview

In 1941, racial tensions are rising in the California community where nineyear-old Sachiko Kimura and her seventeen-year-old brother, Nobu, live. Japan has attacked Pearl Harbor, people are angry, and one night, Sachiko and Nobu witness three teenage boys taunting and beating their father in the park. Sachiko especially remembers Terrence Harris, the boy with dark skin and hazel eyes, and Nobu cannot believe the boys capable of such violence toward his father are actually his friends. What Sachiko and Nobu do not know is that Terrence's family had received a telegram that morning with news that Terrence's father was killed at Pearl Harbor. Desperate to escape his pain, Terrence rushes from his home and runs into two high-school friends who convince him to find a Japanese man and get revenge. They do not know the man they attacked is Sachiko and Nobu's father. In the months that follow, Terrence is convicted of his crime and Sachiko and Nobu are sent to an internment camp in Arkansas, a fictionalized version of the two camps that actually existed in Arkansas during the war. While behind bars and barbed wire, each of the three young people will go through dramatic changes. One will learn acceptance. One will remain imprisoned by resentment, and one will seek a path to forgiveness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781682262429
Publisher:	University of Arkansas Press
Publication date:	05/09/2023
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jan Morrill was born and (mostly) raised in California. Her mother, a Buddhist Japanese American, was an internee during World War II. Her father, a Southern Baptist redhead of Irish descent, retired from the Air Force. Many of Jan’s stories reflect the joys and challenges of growing up in a multicultural, multi-religious, multi-political family.

Editorial Reviews

Morrill deftly exploits … the competing themes of race, grief, love and betrayal in a compelling portrait of the Japanese experience at the height of America’s ‘Greatest Generation.’”
—Shelf Awareness

“This story of a Japanese American family uprooted and forced to live in a bleak World War II internment camp gives human faces to one of the shabbiest chapters in U.S. history. Told from the viewpoint of an engaging Japanese American girl, The Red Kimono tells it all—the bitterness and pain as well as the joy and pride and patriotism of a people too resilient to be beaten by racism. The Red Kimono touches my heart.”
—Sandra Dallas, New York Times best-selling author of Tallgrass and True Sisters

“The attack on Pearl Harbor sets in motion this incredible story of a race of people betrayed by their country. Only a writer with Morrill’s talent could tell it with so much compassion and honesty. You won’t soon forget The Red Kimono.”
—Velda Brotherton, author of The Boston Mountains: Lost in the Ozarks

From the Publisher