Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Book club in November was great.  We had a good group and a great discussion about the book Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet!  We watched a YouTube video on the old Panama Hotel, we experienced some Seattle Jazz, and we listened to an interview of the author, Jamie Ford.  We had an excellent discussion on topics like actually Japanese attack on the US during WWII,  the internment camps, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, our favorite characters in the book, the Chinese button and more.  We also answered the four discussion questions:

• If Ethel knew what was happening with Henry's letters. (Probably)
• If Henry gave up on Keiko too easily.  (They were about 13.  How many of your old boyfriends from that age are you in touch with?)
• If Keiko make enough of an effort to see Henry once she was released from the camp.
• (The romantics said, "no," the realists said, "yes")
• If the US government was right or wrong to "relocate" Japanese-Americans. (Hindsight said definitely and we hope something like that never happens again!  In those frantic early days of the war, the absurdity of what was done to these Americans was not nearly as clear.  120,000 Japanese were interred.)

 
We also thought these facts from the book and interviews were interesting:

•The man who killed an internee was fined for the unauthorized use of the bullet.

•Interracial marriages were against the law.

•“Families hadn’t even left, and people strolled right in and took lamps, furniture, anything that wasn’t nailed down.

•"Hotel has been translated into 24 languages. I’m still holding out for Klingon (that’s when you know you’ve made it)." ---Jamie Ford