Memory Theme Analysis

In Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Japanese America Keiko Okabe and her family are sent to a Japanese internment camp during World War II. Keiko’s family’s imprisonment, along with thousands of other families, in Japanese American internment camps serves as the focal point for the novel’s argument about memory. In portraying their experiences in the camp and the events that follow, Ford explores the different roles that memory can play in the aftermath of traumatic situations. Even as the novel emphasizes the importance of remembering large-scale atrocities, it cautions against allowing one’s remembrance to transform into resentment. Instead, the novel suggests that memory can serve a more positive, if counterintuitive, purpose: instead of miring people and society in the past, memory can propel them, with hope, into a better future.

Henry is horrified at how quickly those around him seem to forget about the internment of Japanese American families. The first internment camp in which Keiko and her family are imprisoned, Camp Harmony, is located on the Washington State Fairgrounds. After the prisoners are dispersed and relocated from Camp Harmony to more permanent camps, Henry reflects: “With the last of the prisoners taken to camps farther inland, Camp Harmony would revert back to being the site of the Washington State Fair just in time for the fall harvest season. Henry wondered if anyone going to the fair this year would feel different walking through the trophy barn, admiring prized heads of cattle. He wondered if anyone would even remember that, two months earlier, entire families had been sleeping there.” This moment underscores how readily people dismiss and then forget about the inhumane treatment of others. Yet it is vitally important, the novel shows, to remain alive to such atrocities. Not only does remembering them honor those who suffered, but it also lays the groundwork for vigilance against future atrocities. This is most obvious as young Henry watches Japanese American evacuees from Bainbridge Island (off the coast of Washington State) disembark from a ferry onto the mainland: “There’s too many of them,” he thinks. “Too many of us.” This realization seems to shape his capacity for open-mindedness and empathy throughout his life.

On the other hand, Henry’s father shows the negative side of memory—how it becomes bitter and destructive when it crosses the line from remembrance to resentment. Henry’s father, a Chinese nationalist, is obsessed with the conflict in his home country of China between Japanese imperial forces and local forces fighting for an independent China. Henry’s father even keeps a map taped to a corkboard and inserts sewing pins to keep track of battles. He is a man obsessed, and the novel shows that this fixation contributes to Henry’s father’s resentment against Japanese Americans like the Okabes. In sharp contrast to Henry’s feelings, Henry’s father’s reaction to Japanese internment is that it is “better them than us.” Henry’s father’s commitment to the cause of Chinese nationalism keeps him from envisioning a world in which Japanese people—even those who are second-generation Americans, like Keiko—could be included in an “us.”

Ultimately, the novel suggests that instead of breeding resentment, memory can be used to foster hope. Throughout his life, as a child and as a man, Henry keeps the memory of Keiko (and his love for her) alive. Even after falling in love with and marrying Ethel, Henry never forgets Keiko—nor does he cease wondering why he stopped hearing from her, or what happened to her family. The novel thus makes a subtle but important distinction between the type of remembrance practiced by Henry and that practiced by his father. While Henry’s father is mired in his obsession with the history between Japan and China, Henry’s memories of Keiko and compassion for others like her help fuel him and keep him connected to a sense of hope throughout difficult times in his life, including Ethel’s death due to cancer.