Try our new book recommendation quiz to get recommendations tailored to your preferences.

Summary and Reviews of Midnight in Broad Daylight by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto

Midnight in Broad Daylight by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto

Midnight in Broad Daylight

A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • First Published:
  • Jan 5, 2016, 464 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jan 2017, 480 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Book Summary

Alternating between American and Japanese perspectives, Midnight in Broad Daylight provides a fresh look at the dropping of the first atomic bomb.

After their father's death, Harry, Frank, and Pierce Fukuhara - all born and raised in the Pacific Northwest - moved to Hiroshima, their mother's ancestral home. Eager to go back to his own land - America - Harry returned in the late 1930s. Then came Pearl Harbor. Despite being sent to an internment camp, Harry dutifully volunteered to serve his country. Back in Hiroshima, his brothers Frank and Pierce became soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army. As the war raged on, Harry, one of the finest bilingual interpreters in the United States Army, island-hopped across the Pacific, moving ever closer to the enemy and to his younger brothers. But before the Fukuharas would have to face each other in battle, the U.S. detonated the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, gravely injuring tens of thousands of civilians, including members of their family.

Alternating between the American and Japanese perspectives, Midnight in Broad Daylight captures the uncertainty and intensity of those charged with the fighting and provides a fresh look at the dropping of the first atomic bomb.

PROLOGUE: SHOCKWAVE

San-u
kitaran to hosshite kaze ro ni mitsu

When strong winds begin to blow, showers cannot be far behind.

Nothing seemed amiss that first Sunday in December 1941. Ponytailed beauties strolled the boardwalk, bodybuilders paraded for show at Muscle Beach, and children shrieked aboard the Whirling Dipper coaster as it clattered over the metal track at the Santa Monica Pier. The day was young, the nation placid, and Christmas was just a few weeks away. No one could have guessed that at that moment, 2,500 miles across the Pacific, Japanese planes were zeroing in on military installations throughout the island of Oahu.

So it was that sometime before noon, a twenty-one-year-old gardener working in the scorching sun had no cause for alarm when his employer emerged from the shade of her house. He stopped the mower to catch her words. "Harry," she said, "Japan has attacked Pearl Harbor."

"Oh, is that so?" The news meant little to him. He nodded and the woman...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Author Pamela Rotner Sakamoto brilliantly captures the hardships and anxieties of the Fukuhara family...continued

Full Review (636 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Mollie Smith Waters).

Media Reviews

Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. A beautifully rendered work wrought with enormous care and sense of compassionate dignity.

Library Journal
Starred Review. Sakamoto succeeds in telling a new, compelling, and essential World War II narrative by presenting a story about family caught on both sides of history.

Publishers Weekly
Sakamoto presents a gripping story of colorful individuals, though her novelistic tone often undermines the gravity of the story she relates.

Author Blurb Herbert Bix, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
Midnight in Broad Daylight is a deeply moving, well-written work that ranks among the better accounts of the injuries inflicted in wartime on civilian and ethnic populations. Students of war crimes and crimes against humanity are sure to notice this book.

Author Blurb Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, coauthor of Farewell to Manzanar
Riveting in its alternating American and Japanese perspectives, and a fresh look at the dropping of the atom bomb over Hiroshima, this story is inspirational as well as educational. A great addition to World War II literature.

Author Blurb Ron Powers, Pulitizer Prize winner and author of Mark Twain: A Life
[O]ne of the most wrenching, inspirational-and until now unknown-true epics of World War II….luminous, magisterial…[Sakamoto] has helped shape and set the standard for a vital and necessary new genre: transpacific literature. Her readers will want more.

Reader Reviews

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Internment Camp Newspapers

Gila Internment Camp RuinsIn Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds, Harry Fukuhara, his sister Mary, and his niece Jeanie were forced into internment camps built to house people of Japanese descent who were living in the United States during World War II. Over 127,000 Japanese Americans, mostly from the West Coast where anti-Japanese sentiment ran highest, were sent to the camps.

Life in the internment camps was difficult, and little privacy existed. People had to use communal showers, toilets, and laundries. While libraries were available, Japanese language books, except for dictionaries, were not allowed. Even under these trying conditions, internees published their own newspapers. The two papers the Fukuharas would ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Midnight in Broad Daylight, try these:

  • Dadland jacket

    Dadland

    by Keggie Carew

    Published 2018

    About this book

    A spellbinding journey into surprising and shady corners of twentieth-century politics, a rackety English childhood, the poignant breakdown of a family, the corridors of dementia and beyond.

  • Unbroken jacket

    Unbroken

    by Laura Hillenbrand

    Published 2014

    About this book

    More by this author

    In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man's journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

We have 5 read-alikes for Midnight in Broad Daylight, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Model Home
    Model Home
    by Rivers Solomon
    Rivers Solomon's novel Model Home opens with a chilling and mesmerizing line: "Maybe my mother is ...
  • Book Jacket: The Mighty Red
    The Mighty Red
    by Louise Erdrich
    Permit me to break the fourth wall. Like any good reviewer, I aim to analyze a book dispassionately,...
  • Book Jacket: The Palace of Eros
    The Palace of Eros
    by Caro De Robertis
    When male suitors intended for her older sisters spread a rumor that Psyche's beauty surpasses that ...
  • Book Jacket: Rejection
    Rejection
    by Tony Tulathimutte
    A young man identifying as a feminist tumbles down the incel rabbit hole after a lifetime of sexual ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Naming Song
    by Jedediah Berry

    Miyazaki meets Guillermo del Toro.

  • Book Jacket

    In the Garden of Monsters
    by Crystal King

    A woman with no past, a man who knows her, and a monstrous garden that separates their worlds.

Book Club Giveaway!
Win Let Us Descend

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward imagines the life of an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War in this instant classic.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J O the B

and be entered to win..