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

by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto

A day or two into his visit, Frank received a bright pink postcard in the mail. His heart skipped a beat. He didn’t need to read the contents to understand. The mere sight of the akagami (red paper) destroyed his world. The paper was the deep pink hue of the sakura (cherry blossom) long appropriated as a symbol for the fleeting lives of youthful soldiers. At age twenty, at the height of the once-joyous cherry blossom season, Frank had been drafted. Calculating his odds of survival, he figured on a year or two. His draft notice was nothing less than a “death sentence.” During the course of Japan’s excruciatingly lengthy conflict, from 1931 to 1945, every family would point to specific days to commemorate, often in sorrow. Frank would describe his own in a letter, and the delivery of his conscription notice became “THE DAY I CANNOT FORGET.”