OF WHITE ASHES

Constance Hays Matsumoto and Kent Matsumoto’s historical novel chronicles the experiences of two Japanese Americans during World War II.

In 1939, Ruby Ishimaru is a fourth grader in Waimea on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. She’s shattered by the death of her mother, who passed away during childbirth, and, two years later, by the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Suddenly, Ruby and her family members are rejected by people in their community, who suddenly see Japanese Americans as enemies. Koji Matsuo, who’s 10 years old in 1939, grew up on the island of Miyajima; he moves to Hiroshima with his family, who despair of Japan’s wartime activities and share with Koji the secret that he’s actually an American citizen. Ruby’s and Koji’s stories are told in parallel, exploring the complicated relationship between Japanese and American identities during the Second World War and its aftermath. Ruby, whose father was imprisoned after Pearl Harbor on suspicion of being an “enemy alien,” spends the war in Japanese detention camps with her sister and stepmother in Arkansas and California, and Koji witnesses the devastating atomic bomb attack against Hiroshima in 1945. The chapters focused on the latter event are the most powerful, and the most upsetting, in the novel. The authors continue the characters’ stories after the war, fascinatingly addressing the different and lasting effects of the conflict on Ruby and Koji. It takes a long time for the two separate storylines to intertwine, but the overall narrative is so compelling, and told with such passion, that readers will scarcely notice. The work is based upon the authors’ real-life family histories, and their commitment to historical research is apparent as they address wartime atrocities with honesty.

An introspective, emotional novel that will draw readers in.