The Climate of the Country

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.”

My section on the Tule Lake camp is here.

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.

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