Color of the Sea

John Hamamura’s debut novel, Color of the Sea (2006), is a historical romance between two Japanese Americans growing up before and during World War II. Drawing on some of the experiences of his own father, a GI who became a Japanese interpreter for the US army, Hamamura paints a portrait of two people growing up bicultural at a time when that identity was repressed, condemned, or seen as treacherous. Telling his story from the points of view of both of his protagonists, Hamamura explores the complexities of wartime Japanese and American sensibilities, the difficulty of being treated like an outsider by co-nationals, and the need to find a place to belong.

Isamu Hamada is born in Hawaii in 1921 but spends his early childhood living with his mother, his sister Akemi, and his brother, Bunji, in Hiroshima. When the novel opens in January 1930, nine-year-old Isamu moves back to Hawaii to live with his father while the rest of the family stays behind in Japan. Because Isamu is an American citizen, he has the opportunity to go to college in the US, hopefully then building a better life for the whole family.

In Hawaii, Isamu becomes Sam. He watches as his proud father, who comes from Samurai stock, is reduced to blue-collar labor in the cane fields where his white bosses treat him as subhuman. Sam’s father sinks into alcoholism, but not before introducing Sam to Fujiwara-san, an eccentric elderly sensei who teaches Sam a cobbled together martial art of his own making. The more Sam studies with his sensei, the more he learns not just the art of self-defense, but also discipline, the code of the samurai, and the philosophy of Mu, or nothingness. After many years of dedication, Sam grows into an idealized Nisei, or first-generation Japanese American: “tanned, lean and hard, reflexes honed sharp as a samurai’s sword.” Along the way, he has a relationship with Yuriko, a teenage lustful infatuation during which he promises to eventually come back from college and marry her.



Sam’s father dies as the young man finishes high school. To fulfill his father’s dreams for him, Sam moves to Lodi, California, with his uncle Genzo, hoping to study at Berkeley. In Lodi, Sam meets the novel’s other protagonist, Yanagi Keiko, the sister of his cousin’s best friend.

Keiko is also Japanese American, and like Sam, she is passionate about martial arts. At the same time, she is a modern woman who appreciates dancing the jitterbug just as much as wielding a naginata during her training as a “samurai woman.” Sam falls deeply in love with Keiko, but although she returns his feelings, he feels honor-bound to his commitment to Yuriko and so doesn’t pursue this new relationship. Sam and Keiko’s ideas about honor and duty drive many of their decisions. As a result, Keiko leaves California in the spring of 1940—her family takes her to Japan to finish high school and to enter an arranged marriage with a man her grandparents have chosen.

In Japan, Keiko is tormented by the feeling that she is an outsider in what she has always believed to be one of her native cultures, seen as too Americanized to be a properly subservient wife and mother.



As WWII begins, it is increasingly clear that Japan will get involved because of its reliance on foreign oil. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Keiko’s family is deported back to the US—all American-born Japanese are declared enemies of the state in Japan and taunted as “American dogs.” But of course, as soon as they return to American soil, they are also declared traitors. Keiko’s family and the family of Sam’s uncle Genzo are sent to internment camps in Arkansas. Meanwhile, Sam, his cousin Dewey, and Keiko’s brother Al are drafted into the US army to fight for a country that has just imprisoned their families for no reason.

In the army, Sam confronts never-ending racism (for instance, his sergeant calls him “Jap Boy”) and the belief that Japanese Americans have divided loyalties and can’t be trusted. Eventually, however, higher-ups realize that Sam’s bilingualism and martial arts training make him more valuable than other draftees. He is recruited by military intelligence, eventually becoming a translator and interpreter for the army and attaining the rank of sergeant.

Sam’s most intense war experience comes when the army sends him on a secret mission to Okinawa to confront a cave full of Japanese soldiers who have military secrets. Because of his knowledge of Japanese culture, Sam is able to find common ground with the men, whose desperation means they would be willing to die rather than give themselves up. Facing their abuse and accusations that he is “a pawn of the Americans,” Sam responds with the Japanese saying, “Sometimes a person faces terrible choices because of a conflict of loyalties.” This philosophical approach softens the men, who end up surrendering.



Just after Sam returns, the US bombs Hiroshima, where Sam’s mother, brother, and sister still live. Broken by what he has gone through, Sam sets out for Hiroshima to try to find his family. It turns out that his mother and sister managed to live through the bombing, but his brother died fighting for the Japanese side.

The novel ends in 1947. Sam and Keiko have married and are doing their best to heal from their wartime traumas, learning how to be both Japanese and American and how not to see their identities as divided.