Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Ballantine Books, imprint of The Random House Publising
Paperback, 285 pages
In 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II. As the owner displays and unfurls a Japanese parasol, Henry, a Chinese American, remembers a young Japanese American girl from his childhood in the 1940s–Keiko Okabe, with whom he forged a bond of friendship and innocent love that transcended the prejudices of their Old World ancestors. After Keiko and her family were evacuated to the internment camps, she and Henry could only hope that their promise to each other would be kept. Now, forty years later, Henry explores the hotel’s basement for the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot even begin to measure. His search will take him on a journey to revisit the sacrifices he has made for family, for love, for country.
Review:I love reading books set in the World War II. When I was younger, that used to be limited to just reading about the Jewish experience and Nazi rule. But as I got older, I realized that there were so many more untold stories during this time. The Japanese invasion in Asia years before it became a world war. The experience of those living within Canada and the States – born with the “enemy” ethnicity but essentially still Canadian and American. It was to these stories that I was able to relate more to.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a story set in Seattle about a young Chinese American boy and a young Japanese American girl. It’s set under the historical events that happened in North America at the time – with “enemy” citizens being evacuated from their homes and put into camps around the country. Through the novel we see the ways in which injustices happened within the free world as the society was worried about the enemies on their home front. From fear and suspicion of races as a whole, many people – innocent people – were displaced and prejudiced towards.
What is interesting about this novel is that we see how it was not just the “usual Americans” who were prejudiced towards the Japanese. The Chinese community had their own misgiving towards the Japanese after many years of war in China, as they were being invaded by the Japanese. The actions of people halfway across the world were blamed equally upon the people of the same ethnicity but perhaps had nothing ever to do with the war across the oceans. Yet we have a young character who is able to see past this – and find love with the Juliet to his Romeo, if you will.
Interlaced with this story is the tale of the complexity of relationships between fathers and sons. It’s about family, obligations, pride, loyalty, and culture.
This was a beautiful novel to say the least. If you’re interested in stories set during this time period, let me know. I’ve read a few and would recommend others – and if you know of something that I would like that’s similar to Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, please comment and let me know.
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