After the hellish experience of the past few years, Aki Ito finally feels like it might be possible to be happy again. She and her parents are about to leave Manzanar, the California desert internment camp into which her family and other Japanese-Americans were forced by the government following Pearl Harbor, for an unfamiliar Chicago neighborhood the government has deemed acceptable for ‘resettlement’. It’s a far cry from the bucolic and comfortable Los Angeles home the Itos had prior to the war, but at least they will be reunited with Aki’s elder sister Rose, previously released to live in Chicago’s Clark and Division street neighborhood. But instead of a smiling Rose to greet them at the station, Aki and her family are met with the somber faces of the Japanese-American elders of the resettlement: Rose had been killed by a train the night before, an apparent suicide. Mr. and Mrs. Ito are so worn down from their ordeal as to meekly accept the verdict, but Aki is angry as well as shocked. Her confident and smart sister Rose would hardly kill herself the day before she was set to rejoin her family, and the more Aki learns about Rose’s final days, the more she is convinced that Rose was murdered. What really happened that day in the Clark and Division el station?
In Clark and Division, Edgar Award-winning author Naomi Hirahara weaves a satisfying mystery into the little-known history of Japanese-American resettlement, a process by which Japanese-Americans—most of whom were American citizens—were allowed to leave internment camps, but not allowed to return to homes on the West Coast. As Aki and her family discover, some strictures of camp life dogged them even in Chicago. Not allowed to gather in groups larger than three, relegated to appalling living quarters due to redlining, and often unable to find jobs matching their qualifications, somehow a fledgling community of Nisei (first generation Japanese-Americans) and Issei (Japanese immigrants) took root. And it is largely through that community that Aki finds out the truth about Rose’s death. It’s a process that puts Aki at great risk—corruption being one of the few things equally shared among ethnic and racial lines in 1940s Chicago—but searching for Rose’s killer is the making of Aki. Always in her elder sister’s shadow before the war, Aki’s sense of purpose in exposing this injustice might give her the strength to overcome the other injustices she endures, and create a different future than the one she had previously envisioned for herself.
It’s safe to say that there’s been no shortage of women-centered World War II fiction released lately, most focused on Europe and the Holocaust, to the point of it almost becoming cliché. Hirahara trains the spotlight on a part of World War II history that largely gets ignored since the story doesn’t always neatly fit the prevailing narrative of America’s part in the war. Clark and Division is a fine mystery with an appealing amateur sleuth, but it’s as a work of historical fiction that it really shines. It is highly recommended to fans of historical fiction, especially World War II titles featuring exceptional women, readers of mysteries where most violence occurs off-stage, and readers who enjoy coming-of-age stories.