Aki Ito has always looked up to her older sister, Rose. Rose was beautiful. She was popular. She was fearless. She was the one to strike out to Chicago to make a new life after the Ito family was incarcerated in Manzanar along with thousands of Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor. So when Rose dies under strange circumstances, Aki has to know what happened and who is responsible. Clark and Division, by Naomi Hirahara, is a thrilling and moving slice of history.
Hirahara shows us brief scenes of Aki and Rose’s lives before Manzanar before rushing us to the internment camp in 1944. The Itos have fallen from their comfortable lives and are struggling to reinvent themselves. They learn that there are opportunities for internees to leave Manzanar if they take jobs outside of America’s West Coast. Rose is the first to bite at the apple. She gets a job in Chicago. The plan is for her to pave the way while the rest of the Itos get permission to leave and line up jobs. Sadly, the very day that the rest of the Itos arrive in Chicago, Rose is found dead. The police believe it was an accident or suicide. Aki rejects both explanations.
Aki is no stranger to racism. Dealing with micro- and macroaggressions since she was a child has taught her to be resilient and stubborn. I admired the hell out of Aki, especially since no one else cares enough to ask questions about Rose’s death. While Aki settles into her job at the Chicago Public Library, she uses every spare minute to talk to Rose’s roommates, her old boyfriend—anyone who might know something. Getting answers is like pulling teeth since everyone seems to have something to hide. The few answers Aki has slowly coalesce into a tragic story.
Clark and Division is a little uneven. The pacing slows here and there where Hirahara decided to include overlong descriptions of, for example, how iceboxes work or includes too much backstory. This book triggered my inner editor several times. The last two-thirds of the book and watching Aki come into her own are definitely worth powering through the rough first third. That said, I’m not sure if I’m charmed enough to pick up the sequel.
