Is Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet a true story?
The “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet” is an actual place. It’s also the title of Jamie Ford’s debut novel. It is Seattle’s Panama Hotel, where an old man named Henry Lee stands as the book opens and remembers an old, doomed love.
Is No-No Boy based on a true story?
No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life “no-no boys.” Yamada answered “no” twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States.
What is the novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet about?
About Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet “Jamie Ford’s first novel explores the age-old conflicts between father and son, the beauty and sadness of what happened to Japanese Americans in the Seattle area during World War II, and the depths and longing of deep-heart love. An impressive, bitter, and sweet debut.”
Why is it called No-No Boy?
the colloquial term for detained Japanese Americans who answered “no” to questions 27 and 28 on the so-called “loyalty questionnaire” during World War II. Those who answered no, or who were deemed disloyal, were segregated from other detainees and moved to the Tule Lake Relocation Camp in California.
What did the Panama Hotel represent in the 1940s?
The Panama Hotel represents the way in which memory persists and manages to reassert itself, even when it is thought to have been long since buried and forgotten.
Does Henry ever find Keiko?
On Monday, Henry is still in high spirits when he goes to school since he’s finally found Keiko at Camp Harmony. He runs into Sheldon and tells him all about what he’s been up to and how he hasn’t been around on weekends because he’s at Camp Harmony.
What were the two key questions posed by the government’s loyalty questionnaire?
It was a two-part question in a single sentence, asking first whether we would swear our loyalty to the United States and in the next breath whether we would “forswear” loyalty to the Japanese Emperor.
What did the Japanese Americans receive as reparations?
This law gave surviving Japanese Americans $20,000 in reparations and a formal apology by President Reagan for their incarceration during World War II.
What happened to Keiko in Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet?
The One Who Got Away Keiko never shows up, and she and Henry both move on and end up marrying other people and starting their own families. They don’t speak for decades, but at the very end of the book, Henry’s son hears his father’s story and is compelled to seek out Keiko.
What is the significance of the Panama Hotel in Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet?
The Panama Hotel represents all of Henry’s memories and emotions from the past; when the basement is opened up, so are the floodgates to everything that he’s tried to keep under wraps for the past few decades.
What happened if you answer no to question 28 on the loyalty questionnaire?
Answering “yes” to Question 28, for the Issei, would leave the Issei without a country. The Nisei were fearful of answering “yes” to Question 28 for it might imply they had previously been loyal to the Emperor of Japan.
What happened to Keiko in hotel on the corner of bitter and sweet?
Why does Marty think that Henry stayed away from Japantown?
By Jamie Ford Marty has always assumed that Henry doesn’t like Japanese things (just like Henry’s father) but when Samantha asks him, Henry reveals that he hasn’t come here in the past because it’s too painful—he misses the way that Japantown used to be.
What happened to Keiko Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet?
Keiko never shows up, and she and Henry both move on and end up marrying other people and starting their own families. They don’t speak for decades, but at the very end of the book, Henry’s son hears his father’s story and is compelled to seek out Keiko.
What happened to Henry’s wife Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet?
Years later, Henry is an old man and his wife Ethel has died of cancer. His son Marty is a university student and is about to marry a white girl named Samantha. Henry asks Marty and Samantha to help him search the basement of the Panama Hotel for things that belonged to Keiko and her family.
Why was the 1943 loyalty questionnaire so damaging to the Japanese American community?
The “loyalty” questionnaire had many unintended consequences, particularly because the WRA simultaneously borrowed the form to initiate its own loyalty investigation of female Nisei and adult Issei without adequate revisions to the form.
What are some good books about the Japanese community in Seattle?
ISBN 1439902151, 9781439902158. Miyamoto, Shotaro Frank (1984). Social Solidarity Among the Japanese in Seattle. University of Washington Press. ISBN 978-0295961514. Shibazaki, Ryoichi. “Seattle and the Japanese—United States Baseball Connection, 1905-1926” (Master’s Thesis).
What did the Japanese do in Seattle in the 1920s?
Early Japanese settlers worked in coal mines, canneries of salmon products, railroad construction areas, and sawmills. By the 1920s farms owned or tended by ethnic Japanese families had produced about 75% of the produce and half of the milk generated in the Seattle area. This included farms in Bellevue and the White River valley.
Is the book three Japanese brothers based on a true story?
In this 2017 book that’s created national buzz, historian Pamela Rotner Sakamoto tells the true story of three Japanese American brothers from the Pacific Northwest who are divided by World War Two: One ends up in an internment camp, while two become soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army.
Where does the book STI take place?
A graphic novel cult fave set in 1970’s suburban Seattle; a mysterious and horrifying STI afflicts the city’s teenage population. A darkly funny and mind-bending sci-fi story of technology and its human counterpart in post-apocalyptic Seattle.