Review: It Had To Be You
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 4, 2013
I have never cried reading a book until this one.  I love the way a piece of US history is taken and written with such a beautiful love story.  It makes it feel more real than reading it in a history book.  The year is 1937 before World War ll.  Dianne Castle wants to be a writer in Los Angles.  She is on a bus and witnesses an air plane crash into a tractor killing a Japanese man.  The mans young son told her he was always told if the family ever needed help to call Johnny Honda.  When Mr. Honda arrives on the scene he is not your average small Japanese man.  He is very tall and very handsome.  Dianne never forgets him.  Later she is at a club with friends and Johnny is the owner of the club.  He is a ladies man.  One morning as she sees him coming from her neighbor's house he is attacked.  It seems that Caucasian men aren't happy that he is not staying within his race.  Dianne comes to his rescue and takes him into her apartment and nurses him back to health.  They fall in love but he tells her it will never work out.  There is too much prejudice against the Japanese even though his generation are US citizens.  After years apart they are reunited and declare their love for each other.  They have to go to her home state of Texas to marry because it is illegal for them to marry in California.  When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor the Japanese/Americans are put in a sort of prison because they are not trusted.  Johnny promises Dianne he will never leave her but then the Japanese men are taken into the Army.