Tadaima! I Am Home unearths Larry Miwa's five-generation history about his family that migrated from Hiroshima to Honolulu. With one foot in Japan and the other in America, the Miwas built lives in both countries, facing the challenges of internment, a civilian prisoner exchange, the atomic bomb, and the loss of their holdings on both sides of the Pacific.
The story begins and ends with the fifth-generation figure, Stephen Miwa of Honolulu, who is tracking down a shadowed reference to his family name: "The Miwas are unlucky." Author Tom Coffman's research recounts the founding sojourner, Marujiro, a fallen samurai, and the sons of subsequent generations - Senkichi, a field labor turned storekeeper; James Seigo, a merchant prince; Larry Fumio, a heroically struggling "foreign" student; and finally the contemporary Stephen, whose nagging questions drive him to excavate his enigmatic past.
Among the book's unusual finds, the most extraordinary is the fourteen-year-old Fumio's student diary, which he maintained in Hiroshima from July 4, 1945, through his survival of the atomic bombing and into following autumn.
Tadaima! I Am Home offers new perspectives on immigration, acculturation, commitment to nation, and the marginalization of distrusted minorities.
Paperback: $17.99
ISBN: 9780824877279
176 pages / 30 b&w illustrations
Published: October 2018
Available on Amazon, Kindle Books, and Apple Books
Quantity orders may be placed with University of Hawai'i Press
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Email: uhbooks@hawaii.edu
Website: www.uhpress.hawaii.edu
