Author : Kimura, Rei
ISBN : 978616-2220197
Category : Books on Asia
Pages : 197
Price:
$5.99
A willow tree, soft and flowy on the outside,
unbreakable and strong on the inside, left to brave the lashings and
extremities of wind and storm but never quite breaking.
Hanako Ishigaki was just 9 years old when her father decided to uproot
the family from traditional and beautiful Kyoto and migrate to Hawaii.
“You are not uprooting this family to some strange outlandish place
where we will have to start all over again and maybe never be accepted,”
his wife ranted. “Why, Kazuo? Why? We are Japanese and we should live
here till the day we die.”
But this was one time Kazuo Ishigaki refused to budge.
We follow Hanako’s arduous journey to Hawaii on a passenger liner and
the shock of finding no one waiting for them there. By a sheer stroke of
luck, if one could call it that, the Ishigaki family, used to much
better times and lives, ended up in Kauia Island in a Japanese
settlement called Furusato to work in a sugar plantation alongside
thousands of Japanese migrants. The book describes the colorful lives of
the Japanese migrant community in Hawaii in the eyes of the young
Hanako and the conflict of two cultures, east and west.
How eventually did Hanako end up in the big city, Honolulu, where she
was to meet James Robertson and start a love affair that was to span and
survive 35 years of separation, war and betrayals to end one cold
afternoon in a sterile hospital room where the loose ends of two
people’s lives and passion finally came together to find closure.
And then, one day, at the peak of the post Pearl Harbor backlash on
Japanese Americans, when Hanako thought that living behind barbed wires
at the Japanese American internment camp of Manzaner, they had hit rock
bottom, there was that dreaded knock on the front door and a soldier
served a deportation order to Japan on them…..
This story is told against a gripping backdrop of war and the horrors
and humiliations of the Japanese American war internment camps following
Pearl Harbor. But even in the most dire and hopeless circumstances
people can dream and Hanako and her best friend, Melanie Tanaka dreamt
of pitching their unusual talent in fashion designing into the world of
haute couture and high fashion. The odds against them were as unscalable
as Mount Fuji in winter but dreams were free….
As the overcrowded ship carrying hundreds of deportees labeled “enemy
aliens” approached the shores of Japan, Hanako told herself firmly.
“We’re going to be all right here, I’m sure of that!”
Was she right? Or would things get really bad before they became better?
So many things happened to shake and test the strength of this willow
tree that readers may ask how did she continue to get up after each
blow?
This book is based on the true story of the turbulent life of Hanako
Ishigaki as she was tossed around by the winds of migration, war
internment camps and an incredibly unlikely and impossible love affair
woven into it to add poignance to a story of great courage and
determination to survive and succeed against all odds.
How will it end?
A poem played in his mind, one that Hanako had composed for him during that one month of remission.
My time on earth
Has come to a close
Do not fret
For we will find each other again
And again
And again.
For our dreams, our love and life are ageless
Eternal
A dream, a love and a life for all time.
 |  | Like A Willow Tree
ISBN : 978616-2220197
Category : Books on Asia
Pages : 197
Price
from : 5.99 US$ (ebook)
|
