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Pamela Rotner Sakamoto is a historian and the author of Japanese Diplomats and Jewish Refugees. Fluent in Japanese, Pamela lived in Kyoto and Tokyo for seventeen years. She works offsite as an expert consultant on Japan-related projects for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Pamela Rotner Sakamoto's website
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Could you describe your book?
Midnight in Broad Daylight is a true account of a Japanese American family with brothers in opposing armies, slated to be on the same island when the atomic bomb is dropped over Hiroshima, hastening an end to the war. Their mother and brother are in Hiroshima. It is a story of war and internment, prejudice and discrimination in two countries, loss and reconciliation, and unwavering love across cultures.
How did you discover this story?
By chance. In 1994, I had recently moved to Tokyo and was working on my dissertation about a Japanese diplomat who had rescued Jews during the Holocaust. Several survivors were visiting Japan for the first time in fifty years. I received a press release and joined them as an observer. Harry Fukuhara, who would become the protagonist in my book, was accompanying them as a favor to a friend. He was bilingual, politically connecte"d, and immensely dignified, but I did not know him beyond an introduction. When I remarked to a young filmmaker that the Holocaust survivor stories were remarkable, she replied, "If you think their stories are incredible, you should talk to Harry." Over the course of four years, Harry shared his ...
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