Makapuu Bay (short story)
Creators: Wakako Yamauchi
Short story by Wakako Yamauchi about a divorced middle-aged Japanese American writer who goes to a literary conference in Honolulu where she runs into an old boyfriend from the war years. In flashback, we learn that Sachiko—nicknamed "Pinky" while incarcerated in Poston with her father—had met Mitch Ochiai at the camp swimming hole, where she asked him to teach her to swim. They become a couple and continue to see each other when she resettles in Chicago while he attends the Military Intelligence Service Language School in Minnesota. But her father's illness—and eventual death—forces her to return to Poston, while Mitch heads off to war, and they lose touch. Sachiko ends up marrying Joe Noda, her block manager, and settling in Los Angeles. Though Sachiko is divorced and Mitch has never married, a rekindling of the romance in Hawai'i is not to be.
Originally published in the 1978 Rafu Shimpo holiday edition, "Makapuu Bay" was reprinted in Bamboo Ridge and in Yamauchi's 1994 collection Songs My Mother Taught Me: Stories, Plays, and Memoir .
Might also like " Reunion " by Hisaye Yamamoto; " Shirley Temple, Hotcha-cha " by Wakako Yamauchi; " The Loom " by R.A. Sasaki
| Author | Wakako Yamauchi |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 1978 |
For More Information
Yamauchi, Wakako. "Makapuu Bay." Rafu Shimpo , Holiday Edition, Dec. 21, 1978, 9, 24–26. Reprinted in Bamboo Ridge 3 (1979): 2–11; Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings By and About Asian American Women , ed. Asian Women United of California (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989): 251–60; Wakako Yamauchi, Songs My Mother Taught Me: Stories, Plays, and Memoir , edited and with an introduction by Garrett Hongo, afterword by Valerie Milner (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1994): 211–18.
McDonald, Dorothy Ritsuko, and Katharine Newman. "Relocation and Dislocation: The Writings of Hisaye Yamamoto and Wakako Yamauchi." MELUS 7.3 (Fall 1980): 116-25.