Color of the Sea: A Novel
4/5
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About this ebook
Growing up in a time between wars, Sam Hamada finds that the culture of his native Japan is never far from his heart. Sam is rapidly learning the code of the samurai in the late 1930s on the lush Hawaiian Islands, where he is slowly coming into his own as a son and a man.
But after Sam strikes out for California, where he meets Keiko, the beautiful young woman destined to be the love of his life, he faces crushing disappointment---Keiko's parents take her back to Japan, forcing Keiko to endure their attempts to arrange her marriage. It is a trial complicated by how the Japanese perceive her---as too Americanized to be a proper Japanese wife and mother---and its pain is compounded by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which ignites the war that instantly taints Sam, Keiko, and their friends and family as enemies of the state.
Sam himself is most caught between cultures when, impressed by his knowledge of Japanese, the U.S. Army drafts and then promotes Sam, sending him on a secret mission into a wartime world of madness where he faces the very real risk of encountering his own brother in combat.
From the tragedies of the camps through to the bombing of Hiroshima, where Sam's mother and siblings live, Sam's very identity both puts his life at risk and provides the only reserve from which he can pull to survive. In this beautifully written historical epic about a boy in search of manhood, a girl in search of truth, and two peoples divided by war, Sam must draw upon his training, his past, and everything he has learned if he's ever to span his two cultures and see Keiko, or his family, again.
John Hamamura
John Hamamura was born in the final year of WWII in a U.S. Army hospital in Minnesota. His father was a GI Japanese language instructor. His mother's family was behind barbed wire at a camp in southern Arkansas. His father's mother and siblings lived in Hiroshima; two of them survived the atomic bomb. He lives in Oakland, California.
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Reviews for Color of the Sea
29 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book had a lot of potential, but I just never really got into it that much. It takes place in the 1930s-1940s, and tells the story of a boy born in Hawaii to Japanese parents. He spends most of his early childhood in Japan, moves back to Hawaii during his teen years, and later moves to California. The book had a lot of potential for addressing the cultural and political struggles of Japanese-Americans during World War II, but I never felt too invested in the characters or the story.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5John was the first author invited to our book club, WORDIES, in California. I had gone down to Placerville from Portland to meet w my friends. It was the first time - I was then in my 50s - that I learned about the internment of Japanese in our country. Hard to believe. It was also the first time I was faced w the wretchedness of the horror of Hiroshima. We moved every few years while I was growing up but it astonishes me that in a lifetime of reading I had missed this. Brilliant depiction from first hand accounts.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5John Hamamura’s debut novel, Color of the Sea, is a heart wrenching story of some of the emotional conflicts faced by Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Many aspects of the story are based on his own family’s true experiences: His father was a GI language instructor during the war and his mother was put in an internment camp in Arkansas. Both parents had family in Hiroshima. Part Coming of Age story, part wartime drama, Color of the Sea explores the themes of honor and courage, family and the Samurai spirit.