Walking in their Shoes: Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara

BY KATE BRAITHWAITE

Aki Ito is a twenty-year old Japanese American, imprisoned in Manzanar, a mass incarceration camp, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Although she grew up in California, on release Aki and her family are forced to relocate to Chicago, with Aki’s older sister, Rose, traveling north several months in advance of the rest of the family. When Aki reaches the growing Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets, she’s devastated to learn that Rose is dead. Unable to accept the news that her sister committed suicide, Aki sets out to find the truth.

While this mystery propels the drama of Naomi Hirahara’s Clark and Division (Soho Press, 2021), the novel also delivers a compelling portrait of the experiences of Japanese Americans after Manzanar. “Re-entry back to regular society,” Hirahara explains, “was as traumatic as being confined in a detention center.” As the co-author of the non-fiction book, Life After Manzanar, and former editor of The Rafu Shimpo, America’s foremost Japanese American newspaper, Hirahara is ideally positioned to bring this period, and a character like Aki, to vivid life.

Clark and Division, a well-known intersection in the Near North side of Chicago was, she explains, an early way station for Japanese Americans released from the ten incarceration camps in the United States during World War II. “Chicago had 400 Japanese Americans before the war; this population multiplied to 20,000 by the mid-1940s. In addition to Clark and Division, these West Coasters lived in the South Side and later the Lakeview area of Chicago. Even though the US government told Japanese Americans not to congregate in large numbers, with housing shortages, they had no choice to cram into apartment buildings around the Clark and Division neighborhood. Very different than its current state, North Clark Street had its share of seedy establishments.”

Two research trips to Chicago were invaluable for Naomi Hirahara. “Luckily I benefited from two travel guides with a passion for Japanese American history in their native Chicago. Since the Clark and Division neighborhood only spans blocks, I walked the area with one of my guides, Erik Matsunaga, as well as exploring the area on my own. Erik provided me with maps and snippets of history. I also read many oral histories that are part of the Japanese American National Museum’s REGenerations oral history project. The situation with Chicago became in sharper focus and when I discovered a community report that outlined the delinquency within the “resettled” people, I knew that I had a hook for a compelling mystery.”

Another stop on her tour was the Newberry Library, where, in the novel, Aki Ito gets a job. It’s an important and historically accurate choice. “Some readers have viewed the Newberry as a symbol for stories and education,” she explains, “but I set it there because a Japanese American activist, Sue Kunitomi Embrey, who is one of three women mentioned in my dedication, actually worked there after coming to Chicago. Sue was originally from Los Angeles and had been incarcerated in Manzanar. I was shocked to step in there and experience its grandeur. Since it’s so close to the Clark and Division neighborhood, it made sense for Aki to work there and gain new insights into her post-Manzanar life.”

And Hirahara also brings her own life experience to bear on the novel—in its pages, Japanese words crop up throughout. “The language, more than anything in the book, is autobiographical. I was raised by a Japanese immigrant mother; Japanese was probably my first language. It’s interesting because I actually have one incorrect Japanese term in the book. Since it’s an idiom that a Nisei, second-generation Japanese American, would hear rather than write, I discovered that I had misheard it all these years. A Japanese-native librarian brought that to my and my editor’s attention. We could have corrected it in future editions but when I thought about it, it was totally authentic for my lead character, Aki, to have misinterpreted it, too.”

Just as Hirahara walked the streets of Chicago, she hopes her readers of Clark and Division will “walk in the shoes of those formerly incarcerated”, gaining empathy and re-thinking how we treat “othered” people, either in the past or today. It’s a desire that informs all aspects of the book, including the title. She explains: “Since I was centering my story on a very particular neighborhood during a brief window of time—1944—I wanted to send a message to readers about the limited geographic scope of the story. Also Clark harkens “Lewis and Clark”—my characters are definitely involuntary explorers while Division is the line that separated these Americans from the rest of the nation.”

About the contributor: Kate Braithwaite is the author of three historical novels, most recently, The Girl Puzzle, a story of Nellie Bly and is a US editor for the Historical Novels Review.