Seigo becomes ill from being in the fields and later
dies. Yoneko’s mother pointedly tells her, “Never
kill a person, Yoneko, because if you do, God will
take from you someone you love” (56).
In “A Day in Little Tokyo” (1986), the protago-
nist is a 13-year-old girl, Chisato, who spends the
day wandering in Little Tokyo after her father and
younger brother elect to attend a wrestling match
in the city instead of going to the beach as they had
originally planned. While her father is not cruel,
he is inattentive; he and her brother both believe
she has sat in the car all day while they were at
the wrestling match. On the way back home, her
father accidentally runs the car into a streetlamp,
for which they are later billed. Everything is fine,
including the car, but there is small satisfaction for
Chisato when her father ruefully admits that they
should have gone to the beach.
Yamamoto’s own life frequently informs her
work; some of her pieces go so far as to indicate
in their titles that they are memoirs. “Life among
the Oil Fields: A Memoir” (1979), for example, re-
counts her memories of being a child in California.
There are not always direct autobiographical par-
allels; more often, it is as if her own memories and
experiences resonate in those of her characters.
Marriage in Yamamoto’s stories is often pre-
sented as a matter of contract or duty, with little or
no pleasure involved. For example, in “The Brown
House” (1951), Mrs. Hattori leaves her gambling,
lying, and abusive husband and takes two of her
five children with her to stay with her sister. When
he promises to quit gambling, she returns to him
for the sake of her children, only to see him resume
his gambling habit. In “Epithalamium” (1960),
Yuki Tsumagari from San Francisco stays in Staten
Island to work for a Catholic rehabilitation center.
She is due to return home but, against the advice
of her supervisors and her own better judgment,
she marries an alcoholic sailor, who remains drunk
throughout their wedding ceremony. Interestingly,
in “Reading and Writing” (1987), marriage is what
sparks the unlikely friendship between two women,
Kazuko and Hallie, who meet only through their
husbands. Their marriages seem happy enough,
but, more important, the story is about female
friendship, something missing from earlier stories.
Fathers do not always appear as simply stub-
born and malicious. “Morning Rain” (1952) is a
story in which a daughter realizes that the two men
in her life—her husband and her father—cannot
communicate, partly because of the language bar-
rier but also because her father is becoming deaf.
It is one of the rare stories where the father is a
sympathetic character, for more than any other in
Yamamoto’s stories. “Las Vegas Charley” (1961)
also presents a sympathetic male character. The
Charlie of the title has two sons, left behind by his
young wife who died while giving birth to the sec-
ond. His sons were raised in Japan by their grand-
father, while he worked in the States. When his
father dies, his sons come to the United States only
to see the outbreak of World War II and their own
internment at a relocation camp. Charley’s first
son, Isamu, enlists and is killed (like Yamamoto’s
own brother). The second son, Noriyuki, plans to
return to Japan but falls in love, marries his sweet-
heart, has children, and settles. The story resolves
around Noriyuki finding some small compassion
for his father in a mire of frustration and shame
after his father dies from cancer. “My Father Can
Beat Muhammad Ali” (1986) recounts the story of
a father, Henry Kusomoto, whose two sons, Dirk
and Curt, mock his boastful claims of athletic
prowess and provoke him to attempt to prove his
impossible claims.
Yamamoto’s work also frequently addresses is-
sues of racism and cultural difference. “Wilshire
Bus” (1950) tells the story of a Japanese-Ameri-
can woman visiting her World War II–veteran
husband at a hospital and hearing anti-Asian
racist remarks from a drunken man on the bus
on the way there. “Underground Lady” (1986)
is a first-person narrative about a 63-year-old
Japanese-American woman who meets the Un-
derground Lady, a homeless woman who speaks
of living underground after her Japanese neigh-
bors burned down her house. The most medita-
tive story on these issues may be “The Eskimo
Connection” (1983), which recounts the unlikely
correspondence between an Eskimo inmate at a
federal prison and Emiko Toyama, an old second-
generation Japanese-American woman living in
Los Angeles.266 Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories