House of the Red Fish

A sequel to the award-winning Under the Blood Red Sun, American author Graham Salisbury’s young adult novel House of the Red Fish (2006) picks up the story of Japanese-American teenager Tomi Nakaji, whose father and grandfather have been interned in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Tomi, now 14, must find a way to help support his family while enduring the racist bullying of his former friend Keet Wilson. Set in Salisbury’s home state of Hawaii, the novel received generally positive reviews, with critics noting its “leisurely pace that allows an exploration of both racism and community” (Kirkus Reviews).

It is 1942, a year after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. All adult Japanese-American men in Hawaii have been interned in detention camps, including Tomi’s father, a fisherman whose income supported his whole family, and Tomi’s grandfather, 70-year-old Joji. Before he was taken away, Joji had time to hide everything that marked the household as Japanese, from the katuna (samurai sword) to the butsudan (an altar to the spirit of Tomi’s grandmother).

Fourteen-year-old Tomi feels responsible for his mother and five-year-old sister, Kimi, but on the day of the bombing, Papa’s fishing boat (a traditional Japanese sampan called the Taiyo Maru) was sunk by US troops, who feared that it might be used in the Japanese war effort. Papa’s employee, Sanji, was killed. Without the income from fishing, Tomi’s family must survive on the money his mother earns cleaning for a wealthy family, the Wilsons, and from selling eggs.

The family’s financial woes are only the beginning of Tomi’s trouble. The Wilsons’ son, Keet—once a close friend of Tomi’s—has become the leader of a gang of anti-Japanese thugs, looking for any opportunity to make Tomi’s life harder. Tomi is hurt and confused by Keet’s change of heart: “Funny to think how he was once an okay guy. What happened to him? That was the mystery. What changed him, really?” Nevertheless, Tomi’s family depends on the Wilsons: not only does his mother work for them, they also live in a small house on their estate. And he still bears the psychological scars of that terrible day a year before: “When you've been inside a war—standing under falling bombs, breathing the smoke, smelling rubber burning, hearing who has died and seeing the damage all over your once peaceful island—you can't shake it off.”

Tomi hatches a plan: to raise his father’s boat from the bottom of the Ala Wai Canal, where it has lain since the day of the bombing. It sits in a row of Japanese sampans, resting in eight feet of water ten feet out, looking “like busted tree stumps in a flood.”

Raising the boat is not merely a logistical challenge. Raising the boat may well be illegal, and the town is under martial law: curfews and blackouts make it hard to act in secret. Keet Wilson and his gang do not take kindly to a Japanese boy trying to raise a Japanese boat. As a whole, the white community regards it with suspicion, at best.

On the other hand, Tomi has a gang of loyal friends, Hawaiians of many different origins: Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian, Filipino, and Portuguese. His best friend, Billy Davis, stands by him whatever happens, as do his buddies Mose and Rico—even when Keet and his gang accuse them of being “Japanese-loving traitors.”

Tomi and his friends get to work, trying various plans to lighten the boat or drag it from the water. Nothing works. Other friends and well-wishers join in, and Tomi begins to feel supported by his community. He also begins to appreciate again the beauty of his home: “The harbor at Kewalo Basin was hot and quiet. The sun, now heading out to sea, poured silver into the light green water. Two old men sat out on the rocks at the mouth of the harbor with fishing poles, looking as sleepy as the boats lounging motionless at their moorings…'Man, I miss going out on the boat with my dad'.”

In the internment camp on Kauai, Grampa Joji has a stroke. He is admitted to Queens Hospital. Billy’s mom works there, and she is able to arrange for Joji to be cared for at home. Joji knows a thing or two about raising sampans. Tomi and his friends almost succeed in retrieving the boat—but they are interrupted by Keet and his thugs, who beat up several of Tomi’s friends and prevent them from raising the boat.

Horrified, Tomi reaches out to the community, telling the story of the hardship his family has suffered since the bombing. In the novel’s rousing climactic scene, many local adults, including soldiers and sailors, rally round to help him raise his father’s boat. By tying US Marine pontoons to the boat, they are able to lift it to the surface.