The Buddha in the Attic

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This novel was inspired by the life stories of Japanese immigrants who came to America in the early 1900s. I have drawn upon a large number of historical sources, and although there is not room here to mention them all, I would like to list those that were most important to me in my research. I am particularly indebted to Kazuo Ito’s Issei: A History of Japanese Immigrants in North America and Eileen Sunada Sarasohn’s The Issei and Issei Women. Other important books include: East Bay Japanese for Action Presents “Our Recollections”; Stan Flewelling’s Shirakawa; Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis’s The Great Betrayal; Evelyn Nakano Glenn’s Issei, Nisei, War Bride; Yuji Ichioka’s The Issei; Impounded, edited by Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro; Lauren Kessler’s Stubborn Twig; Akemi Kikumura’s Through Harsh Winters; Minoru Kiyota’s Beyond Loyalty; Lafcadio Hearn’s Japan, edited by Donald Richie; Ellen Levine’s A Fence Away from Freedom; Tomoko Makabe’s Picture Brides; Sayo Masuda’s Autobiography of a Geisha; David Mas Masumoto’s Country Voices and Epitaph for a Peach; Valerie J. Matsumoto’s Farming the Home Place; Mei Nakano’s Japanese American Women; Only What We Could Carry, edited by Lawson Fusao Inada; Donald Richie’s The Inland Sea; Bernard Rudofsky’s The Kimono Mind; Dr. Junichi Saga’s Memories of Silk and Straw and Memories of Wind and Waves; Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto’s A Daughter of the Samurai; Sonia Shinn Sunoo’s Korean Picture Brides; Ronald Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore; Nagatsuka Takashi’s The Soil; Linda Tamura’s The Hood River Issei; John Tateishi’s And Justice for All; Dorothy Swaine Thomas’s The Salvage; Yoshiko Uchida’s Desert Exile; Wakako Yamauchi’s Songs My Mother Taught Me; and Won Kil Yoon’s The Passage of a Picture Bride. Several lines of the mayor’s dialogue on this page were taken from a Department of Defense news briefing given by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on October 12, 2001. I would also like to acknowledge my debt to Mary Swan, whose short story “1917” provided the inspiration for the first chapter of my novel.

I am deeply grateful to Nicole Aragi, without whose unwavering commitment this book could not have been written; to Jordan Pavlin for her elegant editorial advice; to Kathy Minton and Isaiah Sheffer at Symphony Space for their long and continued support; and to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for its generous assistance. Thank you also to Leslie Levine, Russell Perreault, Michelle Somers, and Christie Hauser. Special thanks to my family and to my best friend, Kabi Hartman. And to Andy Bienen, with love.