Shannon's Reviews > The Translation of Love

** spoiler alert ** 06/16: Immediately revisited this one on audio.

05/16: This was a lovely read. I've enjoyed much of what I've read lately, but this above and beyond. "The Translation of Love" portrays the horror of WWII alongside the hope of the aftermath, the resilience of the people along with the stomach-churning reality of doing anything for one's next meal.

Aya Shimamura and her father are "repatriated" back to Japan from Canada after the war. Aya's mother gave up on life in the internment camp. She "accidentally" drowned when she fell through ice in a local lake, except that when her coat was returned to Aya, it was clear she had weighed it down with rocks in her sewn up pockets. Later, at the very end of the book, when Aya's coat is torn, "love letters" from her mom, in the form of her mother's thoughts and wishes for her, are discovered inside as the stuffing.

Aya's father once hoarded and sold medication on the black-market, but later felt bad and quit. This fact actually saves Aya's teacher, Professor Kondo, when he is dying of pneumonia and the penicillin saves him.

To say Aya has a hard time adjusting to life at a Japanese HS is putting it mildly. The girl assigned to watching out for her, Fumi, at first resents her. Later, she enlists Aya to help her find her sister Sumiko, who is 10 years older, and has always been a second mother to her. But over time, Aya and Fumi develop a real friendship.

Sumiko has gotten herself entangled in the yuck world of entertaining American GIs at a Tokyo dance hall. She has never had to resort to prostitution but has to remain vigilant to protect herself. She got into this only because she felt she needed to help support her family. Once night, she is attacked by a crazed GI and stabs him. She and the bar-owner flee. Sumiko ends up taken in by nuns who take in mixed race babies abandoned by their mothers. When she sees the American GI's face on an American newspaper, she flees the orphanage to protect the nuns.

There's Matt, the Nisei translator and Nancy, a gal he works with. They try to help, and their paths almost always ALMOST cross Sumiko's but not quite. There's a lot of that ALMOST meeting that drives you crazy.

In the end, all works out, and there is a sense of hope in the future. You could almost see such stories on the faces of Japans elders when I was there. There were people who remember doing anything to survive, people who were kids during the occupation who remembered how awful powdered milk tasted, etc. And always a pride in the things that war could change, ancient temples, trees older than Christianity, Mt. Fuji, and The Great Buddha. There really is that appreciation of Macarthur juxtaposed with an underlying fear and distaste of all the American military still there.


04/16 Learned of this one in a Book Page Newsletter. Here's what they have to say:
http://bookpage.com/behind-the-book/1...

Having been attached to NAF Atsugi for five years, this whole idea appeals to me. It was pretty amazing to know when we were there that a statue of MacArthur outside the base (first place MacArthur landed in Japan) was donated by a Japanese businessman. I kept expecting them to hate us, but no. You'd see this admiration for MacArthur over and over when we were there.