Hisaye Yamamoto,one of the pioneers of Asian American literature, was born in Redondo Beach,California shortly after World War I. At the beginning of the U.S. involvement in World War II, which came with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941,both Issei (first-generation Japanese immigrants like Yamamoto’s parents) and Nisei (their American-born children) were suspected of being sympathetic to Japan.Even though they were American citizens, these people were forced to give up their homes and businesses--most of which were in some where related to raising fruits and vegetables—and to spend the war in camps called “relocation centers” in remote areas away from the coast.The effect on many was devastating,for they felt betrayed by the country they had come to love.(Yamamoto’s brother was one of the young Japanese American men who volunteered for the U.S. Army. Sent to fight in Europe, the Nisei unit was among the most decorated in the history of the U.S. armed forces. Yamamoto’s brother was killed in action.)
In the Arizona camp where her family was interned,Yamamoto wrote for the camp newspaper and published a serialized murder mystery. After the war , she became a “rewrite man” and columnist for the Los Angeles Tribune,a black weekly. Her first acceptance by a literary magazine came in 1948;two years later a John Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowship provided her an opportunity to write full-time for a year. Soon she had three award-winning stories: “Seventeen Syllables”(1949) , “Yoneko’s Earthquake” (1951), and “The Brown House” (1951) Several years later,while volunteering at a Catholic Worker rehabilitation farm on Staten Island, a part of New York City,Yamamoto met and married Anthony DeSoto, Together with her adopted son, they returned to Los Angeles, where four more sons were born to them. Yamamoto continued to write stories that were widely anthologized. “I guess I write (aside from compulsion), to reaffirm certain basic truths which seem to get lost in the shuffle from generation to generation,” she has said,”If the reader is entertained, wonderful. If he learns something,that’s a bonus.” *Forty years after the first appearance of Yamamoto’s work in a literary magazine, Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories was published by Women of Color Press.
“The Brown House” illustrates several themes that are characteristic of Yamamoto’s work. As these themes are identified by King-Kok Cheung in her introduction to Seventeen Syllables, the first is “the interaction among various ethnic groups in the American West.” What ethnic groups ,besides Japanese Americans,do you suppose there will be in the story? The second theme is “the precarious relationship between Issei parents and their Nisei children.” How delicate and difficult are the relations between the first and second generations of any immigrant groups?The final theme is the hopes of first-generation Japanese immigrants in contrast to the difficulties and frustrations that they face in America. In “The Brown House,” Mr.Hattori finds an escape from the difficulties and frustrations of his life in gambling. What do you suppose his problems are? Mr.Hattori is very likely one of the “picture bries” sent from Japan to marry the Japanese bechelors who had established themselves in the U.S. What hopes do you suppose she had at the beginning of her marriage? What frustrations do you suppose she faces? And what could be the significance of the brown house?
*Quoted in Kai-yu Hsu and Helen Palubinskas,eds., Asian American Authors (1972).