The New York Times Book Review - Gary Kamiya
…engrossing…Deeply reported and researched, Sakamoto's book provides a fascinating close-up of the travails of wartime life in an increasingly fascistic Japan…Sakamoto tells her tale as a straight historical narrative, with little authorial intervention. This omniscient approach, and the vast scope of the subject, lends her tale a novelistic sweep…Midnight in Broad Daylight not only tells one family's remarkable story but also makes an important contribution to our knowledge of the Japanese-American experience in World War II, on both sides of the ocean and the hyphen.
Publishers Weekly
10/12/2015
In this sweeping portrait, historian Sakamoto explores family dynamics as she profiles U.S. Army Col. Harry Fukuhara (1920–2015), an eminent linguist whose brother served in Hirohito’s army during WWII. Sakamoto draws on extensive interviews as well as a long acquaintance with her subject and his family to infuse the narrative with great poignancy. Opening in Seattle with the 1929 stock market crash, Sakamoto’s account introduces Harry, his brothers Frank and Pierce, and their sister, Mary, whose world crashed with the 1933 death of their father. Desperate, their mother whisks them to her hometown of Hiroshima, where the children suffer culture shock. Unable to assimilate, Harry returns to the U.S. in 1938, a year and a half after Mary does, but both of them end up in an Arizona internment camp in 1942. When Army recruiters scouted the camp looking for translators, Harry passed the test, embarking on a career in U.S. military intelligence. Despite their efforts to avoid battle, his brothers in Japan were drafted in a 1945 last-ditch “mass mobilization.” Frank’s experiences as a teenager in the Japanese Army provide the counterpoint to Harry’s wartime reminiscences. Sakamoto presents a gripping story of colorful individuals, though her novelistic tone often undermines the gravity of the story she relates. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
Deeply reported and researched… Midnight in Broad Daylight” not only tells one family’s remarkable story but also makes an important contribution to our knowledge of the Japanese-American experience in World War II, on both sides of the ocean and the hyphen. — New York Times Book Review
[S]ublime prose and prodigious research…“Midnight in Broad Daylight” is as riveting and moving a book as has ever been written about World War II, made all the more compelling by the blending of American and Japanese perspectives. — Seattle Times
“An intimately detailed look at the agony of a Japanese American family struggling to maintain American loyalty amid discrimination and war. . . . A richly textured narrative history. . . . A beautifully rendered work wrought with enormous care and sense of compassionate dignity.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[O]ne of the most wrenching, inspirational-and until now unknown-true epics of World War II….luminous, magisterial…[Sakamoto] has helped shape and set the standard for a vital and necessary new genre: transpacific literature. Her readers will want more.” — Ron Powers, Pulitizer Prize winner and author of Mark Twain: A Life
“Riveting in its alternating American and Japanese perspectives, and a fresh look at the dropping of the atom bomb over Hiroshima, this story is inspirational as well as educational. A great addition to World War II literature.” — Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, coauthor of Farewell to Manzanar
“This deeply researched and elegantly written history is a rare human drama that spans the Japanese-American experience as few, if any, books have done…. a cultural document that immerses the reader…” — USA Today
“Midnight in Broad Daylight is a deeply moving, well-written work that ranks among the better accounts of the injuries inflicted in wartime on civilian and ethnic populations. Students of war crimes and crimes against humanity are sure to notice this book.” — Herbert Bix, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
USA Today
This deeply researched and elegantly written history is a rare human drama that spans the Japanese-American experience as few, if any, books have done…. a cultural document that immerses the reader…
Seattle Times
[S]ublime prose and prodigious research…“Midnight in Broad Daylight” is as riveting and moving a book as has ever been written about World War II, made all the more compelling by the blending of American and Japanese perspectives.
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
Riveting in its alternating American and Japanese perspectives, and a fresh look at the dropping of the atom bomb over Hiroshima, this story is inspirational as well as educational. A great addition to World War II literature.
New York Times Book Review
Deeply reported and researched… Midnight in Broad Daylight” not only tells one family’s remarkable story but also makes an important contribution to our knowledge of the Japanese-American experience in World War II, on both sides of the ocean and the hyphen.
Ron Powers
[O]ne of the most wrenching, inspirational-and until now unknown-true epics of World War II….luminous, magisterial…[Sakamoto] has helped shape and set the standard for a vital and necessary new genre: transpacific literature. Her readers will want more.
Herbert Bix
Midnight in Broad Daylight is a deeply moving, well-written work that ranks among the better accounts of the injuries inflicted in wartime on civilian and ethnic populations. Students of war crimes and crimes against humanity are sure to notice this book.
USA Today
This deeply researched and elegantly written history is a rare human drama that spans the Japanese-American experience as few, if any, books have done…. a cultural document that immerses the reader…
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"A beautifully rendered work wrought with enormous care and sense of compassionate dignity." —Kirkus Starred Review
Library Journal - Audio
04/01/2016
"Nothing seemed amiss that first Sunday in December 1945." In California, 21-year-old Harry questions why his white employer is sending him home. His comment that he had nothing to do with Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor gets him promptly fired. In Hiroshima, 4,000 miles away, 17-year-old Katsutoshi, also called Frank, boards a train to school, mulling over something he overheard about "our victorious assault on Hawaii." What follows is the U.S. entry into World War II, which then culminates with the atomic decimation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; within that context, historian Sakamoto follows the disparate experiences of the Fukuhara family, as she reveals Harry and Frank to be two U.S.-born brothers divided by war. As meticulous as Sakamoto has been with research, her greater feat is her storytelling prowess. Emily Woo Zeller is a serviceable narrator here; her interpretation tends toward overly measured, with the undeniable drama dampened by a too-languid pace. VERDICT Disappointing narration aside, Midnight proves to be a resounding literary success that profoundly personalizes the devastating human cost of war. This work would enhance all historical collections.—Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC
Library Journal
★ 11/01/2015
This is an epic chronicle of the Fukuharas, a Japanese family living in the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century who moved to their mother's ancestral home in Hiroshima during the Great Depression, only to have two of the children return to the United States, while others were conscripted in military service. Sakamoto's scrupulously researched story employs material gathered through interviews with surviving Fukuhara family members to show how the war in the Pacific affected both the Japanese and Japanese Americans. Chapters alternate between events in the United States and Japan as the author follows three of the brothers, two in the Japanese Imperial Army and one in the U.S. Army. Before the brothers meet on the battlefield in the Philippines, where all three are stationed, an atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. This history is evocative of Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sister in scope but provides a richer look at the human costs of war. VERDICT Sakamoto succeeds in telling a new, compelling, and essential World War II narrative by presenting a story about family caught on both sides of history.—John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston
JUNE 2016 - AudioFile
The Fukuhara family was intimately affected by the events of WWII, both in the Pacific Northwest and in Hiroshima, Japan. With a deliberate yet delicate tone, narrator Emily Woo Zeller traces the paths of various family members back and forth to Japan for reasons of education and family, then to internment camps following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the brothers' service in the Japanese and the United States Armies, and, ultimately, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Woo Zeller's narration is adequate, though lacking the kind of the energy that would have made this fascinating story even more engaging in the audio format. Uniquely positioned with roots on both sides of the conflict, the Fukuhara family makes history come alive in a story that focuses on real individuals who lived through the dramatic events. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2015-09-23
An intimately detailed look at the agony of a Japanese-American family struggling to maintain American loyalty amid discrimination and war. Historian and teacher Sakamoto weaves a richly textured narrative history of the Fukuhara family, who moved from Hiroshima to Auburn, Washington, in 1926. However, financial issues after the death of the father forced them to move back in 1933. Somewhat typically at the time, the family was made up of the first-generation immigrants—businessman Katsuji and homemaker Kinu—and their five American-born children. The two eldest, Mary and Victor, were sent back to Hiroshima to help their aunt in her lucrative candy-making business, then subsequently returned to the U.S. as teenagers, culturally confused kibei whose English had been mostly forgotten. Harry, the spirited middle son and the one most thoroughly Americanized, was not happy about the move back to Japan, though his five-year stay allowed him the language immersion that would be invaluable during World War II, when, interned with his sister Mary at the Gila River Relocation Center, Arizona, in the fall of 1942, he was plucked by the Army for intelligence translation in the Pacific theater. The Japanese-speaking author offers fascinating research into the lives of these conflicted immigrants. At the time, Japanese-American youth who served in the Japanese army automatically relinquished their American citizenship, which Harry, by moving back to the U.S. at age 18, refused to do, unlike his other brothers. The specter of the atomic bomb hovers ominously over the narrative, and while most of the Hiroshima family managed to survive, the physical and psychological scarring were gruesome and lasting. American soldier Harry's resolution to return to Japan in October 1945 to find his family forms a poignant closure to this remarkable tale. A beautifully rendered work wrought with enormous care and sense of compassionate dignity.
