In 1982, Japanese Canadians and Americans sought redress from their governments internment during World War II; the anti-nuclear movement in Europe and North America accelerated; and a Japanese Canadian poet,1 Joy Kogawa, joined her voice to both campaigns through a stunning first novel called Obasan. The novel is narrated by the central character, Naomi Nakane, who has been raised by Uncle and Obasan (aunt or woman in Japanese) since the age of five, when her mother, having gone to Nagasaki on family business, is stranded there after Pearl Harbor, and when her father is sent to a labor camp prior to the removal of all Japanese from British Columbia into internment camps. Father dies before the war ends, his frail health undermined by camp conditions. Mother survives the war but dies several years later from her wounds. Obasan is instructed by Mother not to tell the children of her disfigurement in the Nagasaki atomic bombing. The Japanese phrase used is kodomo no tame ni, for the sake of the children. In what becomes a perversion of Obasan's trust, Naomi at age thirty-six still does not know of her mother's fate, though she questioned Obasan again and again in the beginning. Gradually she gives up, but her internal questioning persists and develops into a sense of betrayal, a lack of self esteem, a fear of the past, and a victim's acceptance of biological extinction, Naomi is uncomfortable that both she and Aunt Emily are unmarried and that Obasan gave birth to two stillborn infants.
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Jan 1, 1990
Shirley Geok-Lin Lim 
Open Access
