Nakamura Comes Home (short story)

Short story about the return of a Nisei veteran to his California hometown by Henry H. Hayden. Kido Nakamura, with his chest full of medals and a limp due to a war wound, returns to Bonneville, where he had grown up as an orphan, and been on his own since age fourteen, until his forced removal to Tanforan . From camp, he joined the 442nd and served in Europe. He stops first at the hotel where he used to live and work, but a former co-worker tells him that the new owners are unwelcoming. He walks through he town, seeing racist signs, tangible evidence of anti-Japanese sentiment. Walking out to a farm he thinks he can get a job at, he is harassed by drunks and ponders his future in the town.

Hayden, a Protestant chaplain at the University of New Mexico, had been in California during and after the war and based the story on things he saw when Japanese Americans returned in 1945. The story first appeared in a campus literary magazine and was reprinted in the Pacific Citizen . ^[1]

Might also like " Case History " by Bradford Smith; " The Service Flags " by Bill Hosokawa; " Welcome Home! " by Len Zinberg