Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Jamie Ford’s perfectly titled book, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, inspired and touched me. Based on historical facts, the novel is about a middle-aged man reflecting on his childhood in Seattle during World War II. While in grammar school, Henry Lee becomes fast friends with Keiko Okabe and they bond over their non-Caucasian identities. Henry is Chinese and Keiki is Japanese, a not so remarkable fact in 2017, but a defining one in the 1940’s. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States government orders more than 125,000 Japanese-Americans to be “evacuated” from the Coast to ensure they are not spying for the Japanese. Distraught and confused by the edict, Henry races to the train station to see Keiko before she departs. Henry says, “Each person wore a plain white tag, the kind you’d see on a piece of furniture, dangling from a coat button." This description is a powerful reminder of how fear and racism can result in cruelty and injustice. Keiko and her family are taken first to a temporary relocation center outside of Seattle, and then to a permanent relocation center in Idaho. Possessions of the Japanese families were left at the Panama Hotel, a gateway between Chinatown and Japantown. (The hotel still operates today.)

Henry misses Keiko and feels the eeriness of her nearby empty neighborhood without the Japanese families. Henry’s immigrant parents don’t understand Henry. They simply want him to be perceived as American. When Henry wants to take a bus to visit Keiko in Idaho, Henry knows his parents will be opposed. Henry’s mother says, “You, me, all of us risk going to jail if we help them. I know you have a friend. The one she calls on the telephone. The one from the Rainer School?  She is Japanese.” Henry worries about Keiko and wonders how she would cope if she were sent back to Japan; Keiko doesn’t even speak Japanese. Henry navigates his way to see Keiko and her family. They exchange long letters for months until eventually the letters mysteriously stop and they lose touch. Henry stays in Seattle, falls in love, marries, and has a son. Henry has made a sweet life from a bitter circumstance.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is rich with history; jazz, multiculturalism, an eclectic cast of characters and several plot twists. It explores racism and xenophobia and the painful distance that can exist between immigrant parents and their American offspring. At its heart, this novel is a story about Henry and Keiko’s love in the midst of WWII when they were powerless to affect the trajectory of their lives. The book also explores Henry’s journey toward an understanding of the frailties, vulnerabilities and complexity of his parents whose rigidity and fear hurt him. Though Henry did not have the life he envisioned with Keiko, he exhibits restraint, kindness, and a generosity of spirit. And after his beloved wife Ethel dies of cancer, Henry visits the dilapidated Panama Hotel and finds a couple of Keiko’s possessions in its basement. He wonders where she might be living. Without spoiling the ending, I will say that as I finished the last page, I hoped that Jamie Ford was working on a sequel.