Itsuka
Itsuka translates to "some day," as in, someday ancient wrongs will be righted, old grievances will be redressed. This is the story of the long struggle by Japanese Canadians to receive compensation for the racist evacuation and internment policies carried out by their government during World War II. Many derailed lives never got back on track; many continue to carry the burden of the fight for redress. Naomi Nakane, raised by her gentle aunt and uncle on a prairie farm, finds herself thrust into the redress movement in middle age. She and her friends are up against not only a resistant government and its successive ministers for multiculturalism but also the insidious contingent within their own ranks who believe that a formal apology and a token compensation sum will suffice. In language at once spare and poetic, Kogawa's powerful polemic moves us to dream with her that "itsuka, someday, the time for laughter will come." Recommended.- Barbara Love, St. Lawrence Coll., Kingston, OntarioCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.