The Climate of the Country

by Marnie Mueller

This new novel by award-winning author Marnie Mueller tells the tragic and dramatic story of Tule Lake Japanese American Segregation Camp during World War II. It is narrated from the unique insider view of Denton Jordan, a conscientious objector, and his wife Esther, who are both living and working in the camp. 

In this gripping tale of the disintegration of loyalty, love, and friendship, we experience a disturbing piece of American history. Violence erupts when Camp Director Ted Andross imposes repressive and culturally insensitive measures against the Japanese American detainees. Already imprisoned Issei are asked to renounce the Emperor - their God - in order to prove their loyalty to the United States. Their children, even though they are U.S. citizens, are forced to make the agonizing choice between family and country. The crisis pits Andross against his staff, husband against wife, and friend against friend. In the midst of this tension, Denton, a pacifist during a time when being a man meant "shouldering a gun for America," is struggling to save his disintegrating marriage with Esther, the daughter of Jewish intellectuals working to get Jews out of Europe. 

The novel explores the difficulty of living up to one's own principles and the psychological impact of trauma on personal relationships - dramatizing how intense pressure can lead to anger, self-doubt, infidelity and murder.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

305 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

I was born in the Tule Lake Japanese American High Security camp in Northern California during WWII to Caucasian parents who had gone there to work to try to make a terrible situation tolerable for the people incarcerated there.

In 1963, I answered President Kennedy's call to "ask not what you country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." The very day I entered the Peace Corps was the day he was assassinated. I spent two years in Guayaquil, Ecuador living and working in an urban barrio. When I returned to the United States I worked as a community organizer in Spanish Harlem in New York City. I later produced rock and folk concerts and city-wide festivals, and served as the Program Director of WBAI-FM an alternative radio station in New York City.

In the 1980s, I began to write and published many short stories, essays, and poems in literary magazines, anthologies, and commercial venues. And in 1994, I published my first novel, GREEN FIRES, set in the rain forest of Ecuador, which drew on some of my Peace Corps experience, as well as documented the first incursions of oil companies into the region.

My second novel, THE CLIMATE OF THE COUNTRY, is set in the Tule Lake Camp and is loosely based on my parents' experiences working there.

MY MOTHER'S ISLAND, my third book, takes place in a small working class community in Puerto Rico. Though a novel, it closely follows the real story of my mother's death there and how the neighbors came in to help me help her to die.

I've been fortunate in that my novels have garnered many awards and notices. Anyone interested in learning more can go to my website at marniemueller.com.

I'm currently working on a non-fiction book about my relationship with a Japanese American showgirl who was interned in Minidoka Camp in Idaho during World War II.

I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City with my husband, Fritz Mueller.

Reviews

[John Thorndike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two tales unfold in this powerful book. One is the racist story of a California segregation camp where Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants to the U.S. were interned during World War II. The other is the story of a couple, Esther and Denton Jordan, who work at the Tule Lake camp. The essential injustice of the Segregation camp, plus a riot and a killing, are seamlessly entwined with the couple’s marriage.

In both stories, troubled pasts are at play. The treatment of the camp’s internees reflects the U.S. history with Blacks and Native Americans, even as Esther’s reactions to her daughter echo how she was treated by her own mother. At one point she chastises her daughter, “Parin, I detest your whining. Do you know how unattractive you are when you whine and simper like an idiot child? Do you know how ugly it makes you? Do you know how grotesque your face becomes?”

But in The Climate of the Country there’s always another side to the story. The Tule Lake camp is racist at its core—but Denton Jordan is dong his best to combat this. A struggling Esther lashes out at her daughter, but at other times her love pours out freely. That’s what makes this book so strong: complexity is honored. Marriage too tips back and forth. One minute Esther loves Denton, and the next she’d like to toss him away. “No one ever told you about this part of living with a husband, this violent seesawing within the span of a day, or even within an hour.”

The ambiguity holds to the final pages. Much has changed for Denton after his time in the camp, “But he knew that he would never again live innocently in America. He would be a loyal citizen, maybe even an honorable soldier, but his loyalty to this nation would be permanently shaded by what he had learned here.”

So too for the reader. I found much to ponder here about the nation, marriage and parenting.

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a story about the Tule Lake internment camp after it became a segregation camp.


The story behind that is this: the persons of Japanese ancestry in the internment camps had to fill out a survey that had two very controversial questions. Number 27 asked if the person signing would be willing to serve in the US military, and number 28 asked if they were willing to give up any allegiance they had to the Emperor of Japan.

This was bad in a variety of ways. For one thing, the people answering the survey were all in the internment camps. They had been uprooted from their homes, had to sell most of their belongings (in most cases), lost their jobs, and were put into the camps, all of this being done without anyone being accused of anything, arrested, or convicted of anything. They were all just considered guilty of being persons of Japanese ancestry, and that is enough.


So question 27 was extremely bold, asking people who had been treated like dirt if they would be willing to fight, and perhaps die, for a country that treated them like unwanted baggage. In addition, the Issei, those who came to the US directly from Japan, were not even allowed to become US citizens.Number 28 was a very bad question from the internees view. Since many of them (about a third) were not allowed to have US citizenship under any circumstances, then if they also gave up their loyalty to the Emperor they would be, basically, people without a country.


So, a number of people answered “no” to both questions, and thus were branded “no-no's”, and were removed from the other camps and sent to Tule Lake, which was converted from a regular camp to a segregated camp for the “troublemakers.”


That section also includes information on the unrest at the camp, which is the background for the events in this book.


The main characters are white people who are in the administration of the camp. Some of them are basically anthropologists studying the camp people and how they react to being in the camp.


There really was a riot (details are in my section above), and so the book starts off with the aftermath of the riot.


The early part of the story deals with the time just after the riot, and how some of the Japanese were divided among themselves into groups; those supporting the riot, and those who wanted nothing to do with it.


Denton is the main Caucasian character in the story. In a meeting he sees just how severely divided the Japanese are. References are made to beatings to force people to vote “no-no”, and attacks against Japanese who worked for the administration, being considered traitors to the Japanese.


Nebo is one of the Japanese characters. His mother is one of the ones who really believed in the Emperor. Although Denton and he were sort of friends early on, Nebo became more pro-Japanese and their friendship eroded. Background information is given concerning the cause of the riot and the reactions of the pro-Japanese group.


There is also a good description of the physical make-up of the buildings, how they were constructed, etc.


The book also is very good at making the characters real. Denton, for example, is a pacifist, and this is causing problems between he and his wife.


His wife, Esther, is not dealing with things well and she has a bad temper, taking it out on their three-year-old daughter, Parin. Although the main theme of the book deals with the internment camps, a sub-theme is about how problems people are going through can affect their marriage and how they act towards each other. Esther, in the area of chapters 9 to 11 or so, reminds me of Joy from Dead Like Me in how she acts.


The book has a number of themes:


1. The internment of persons of Japanese ancestry, including the sometimes terrible conditions they had to live under.


2. The loyalty questionnaire, and how this led to a Tule Lake that became a center for “dissidents.”


3. The types of pressures that the Causasian workers were under in the administration.


4. Just how split that camp was between pro-Japanese internees and pro-American internees, along with the violence that came with that split.

5. How a pacifist comes to terms with feelings of violence, and how his pacifism affects his marriage.


6. Denton's extra-marital affair.

The book overall is a good read, but I have some reservations. For one thing, you really have to have some knowledge about the internment of persons of Japanese ancestry in WWII in order to appreciate what is going on in the book. If you don't know anything about the history, the book won't make much sense to you.


Second, I think that the parts of the book that deal with Denton's physical lovemaking to the “other woman” were not really necessary to the theme of the book. Normally, I have no problem with such scenes, but in the context of this book they appeared unnecessary.


Although Denton's personal story is sort of wrapped up, the problems at the camp aren't; it's basically an ending that's fairly depressing since the situation at the camp is left virtually hopeless.


Thus, the book overall is fairly good, but I think it could have been better with some of the material left out, and with some kind of resolution to the camp problem, even if it was bringing in someone else or changing the timing of events into the slight future, and having the camp close down as it really did.

[Dholsten · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing. Too much explaining within the protagonist's inner monologues. The tension builds way too slowly (albeit there is the camp riot that takes place immediately, but the resolutions drag and the characters that are met fail to make a deep-rooted connection with this reader's mind). Found myself skipping chapters, and towards the end, a silly sex scene is written and the ending of the novel...as suspected, flat.

[Linda · Rating 1 out of 5]

WWII Japanese internment from the perspective of a conscientious objector working at the Tule Lake camp. Heartbreaking and emotionally difficult to read.