Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto

The next morning, Kinu opened her local Chūgoku Shimbun newspaper to a stream of jubilant headlines from official Japanese news sources throughout the Pacific. “Surprise attacks” had stunned “every direction,” including the “first air raids on Honolulu”; Singapore was “under bombardment,” as well as foreign military bases at Davao, Wake, and Guam. In Shanghai, the British fleet had been “sunk,” while the American one had “surrendered.” Japanese raids were pummeling Hong Kong and the Malay Peninsula. Kinu, trembling, put the newspaper down and waited to confide in her son. The Japanese headlines were accurate; Allied forces were struggling to repel Japan’s lightning attacks and stunning advances. In Washington, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was wheeled into Congress, where he invoked in his inimitable baritone, “a date which will live in infamy.” His entire speech lasted little more than seven minutes. Within an hour, Congress passed a declaration of war, with all but one dissenting vote. On Oahu, where the battleships moored at Pearl Harbor listed, smoldered, and burned, the tally of sailors, soldiers, and civilian deaths would soon surpass 2,400.