Daughter of Moloka'i

This novel is the sequel to Moloka'i and follows the life of Ruth Utagawa, the daughter of Rachel, the protagonist of the earlier book.

In 1917, Sister Catherine Voorhies arrives at the Kapi'olani Home for Girls in Honolulu carrying an infant named Ruth Utagawa. Ruth's parents are patients at Kalaupapa, the leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka'i, and were forced to surrender her at birth. Sister Mary Louisa Hughes, a Franciscan nun, promises to care for Ruth.

Ruth grows into an adventurous, animal-loving child but struggles with her identity. The other girls call her hapa, a Hawaiian word meaning "half," referring to her mixed Hawaiian and Japanese heritage. On visiting Sundays, no one comes for Ruth, and four couples reject her for adoption. At age four, she secretly befriends a stray dog she names "Only," but when the matron refuses to let her keep him and Only vanishes, Ruth's grief hardens into fierce anger.

A Japanese couple, Taizo and Etsuko Watanabe, visit the Home seeking a girl to adopt. Ruth notices their eyes look like hers and agrees to go with them. They rename her Ruth Dai Watanabe and bring her to Honolulu's Chinatown, where she meets three brothers and the family cat, Mayonaka. When Etsuko asks Ruth to be her flower, Ruth replies she would rather be a butterfly.

In 1923, Taizo's older brother, Jiro, lures the family to Florin, California, with a false promise of partnership on his 100-acre farm. Taizo discovers the farm is deeply in debt and, trapped with no money to return to Hawai'i, takes control of the finances. Ruth thrives on the farm but faces bigotry: Japanese students are segregated from white students at school. On her tenth birthday, she asks Etsuko why her birth mother gave her up. Etsuko assures her she was loved but had no choice, without revealing the truth. When the 1929 crash threatens foreclosure, Taizo and Jiro negotiate a sharecropping arrangement with their anti-Japanese neighbor, Sheriff Joseph Dreesen, losing ownership of the land but avoiding homelessness.

During adolescence, Ruth falls for a Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) boy named Freddy Kurahara, but his parents forbid the relationship because Ruth is not "pure-blood" Japanese, deepening her resentment of her hapa identity. She later meets Frank Harada, a kind Nisei man who dreams of opening a restaurant. They marry, and Frank opens Frank's Diner in Florin while Ruth manages purchases and inventory. They have two children, Donald and Peggy, and a Labrador named Slugger.

After Japan bombs Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the family burns every Japanese item in their house to avoid suspicion. Executive Order No. 9066 authorizes the removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. The Haradas sell the diner's $10,000 inventory for $1,000 and board a train, where soldiers lower the window blinds so white people outside cannot see the passengers.

The family is sent to Tanforan Assembly Center, a converted racetrack near San Francisco, where they are assigned to a horse stall reeking of manure. Taizo tells them they will gaman, a Buddhist concept meaning to endure the unbearable with patience and dignity. A letter reveals that Slugger ran away repeatedly searching for the family and was never found. Taizo privately learns that most Japanese in Hawai'i were never interned; had Jiro never lured him to California, his family would still be free. He tells no one.

In October 1942, the family transfers to Manzanar Relocation Center in California's Owens Valley, a camp of 10,000 people surrounded by mountains and barbed wire. Taizo collapses from heatstroke while farming and is forced to stop, privately humiliated by the loss of his role as provider. Ruth finds a stray kitten she names Snowball. Tensions explode in December when the arrest of a popular labor organizer sparks a riot, and military police fire into a crowd of protesters, killing two young men and wounding at least 10 others.

The Army distributes a loyalty questionnaire requiring internees to swear allegiance to the United States. Issei, or first-generation Japanese immigrants like Taizo, fear that forswearing Japan will leave them stateless since the U.S. denies them citizenship. Taizo promises his family he will answer "yes-yes" but privately answers "no-no." At a segregation hearing, he delivers a speech about believing in American principles only to have them betrayed, and refuses to change his answers. He is transferred to Tule Lake Segregation Center; Etsuko follows. Ruth's brother Ralph volunteers for the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

At Tule Lake, Taizo intervenes when soldiers beat a fellow internee and is struck with a rifle butt, then imprisoned in the stockade in freezing temperatures for seven weeks. He contracts bacterial pneumonia and dies in early January 1944.

The Supreme Court eventually rules that the government cannot detain loyal citizens. The Watanabes return to Florin in April 1945 to find their farm looted, Japanese businesses burned, and Frank's former diner resold for 30 times what he received. After viewing newsreel footage of Nazi death camps, Ruth resolves never to complain about her own suffering and buries her anger. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki end the war but kill relatives and friends of Florin's Japanese community.

In 1948, now resettled in San Jose, Ruth receives a letter from her birth mother, Rachel Utagawa, who reveals she was forced to give Ruth up because she has Hansen's disease, commonly known as leprosy. Etsuko tells Ruth the full story: Taizo was nursed through childhood illness by a midwife named Dai who later contracted leprosy and was disowned. Taizo adopted Ruth and named her Dai in honor of that woman. Rachel visits with 32 birthday presents, one for each year of Ruth's life. Etsuko welcomes her warmly: Ruth calls Etsuko Okāsan, Japanese for mother, and Rachel Makuahine, Hawaiian for mother.

Rachel becomes a beloved grandmother. In 1954, the family visits Hawai'i. During the trip, Snowball falls ill with cancer and is euthanized, prompting Peggy to decide she will become a veterinarian. In 1957, a drunken Jiro reveals that Taizo was beaten and imprisoned before his death. Ruth is shattered but protects Etsuko from the truth. Rachel helps her release her rage through the Hawaiian concept of kala, meaning to forgive and let go.

Etsuko is diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Rachel sends a bird of paradise cutting from Maui, and Etsuko plants it, hoping its bloom will bring the longevity that cranes symbolize in Japanese legend. After months of decline, the flower blooms. Etsuko is wheeled outside to touch its petals, smiles, and dies peacefully that night. Ruth understands the bloom represented rebirth, the Buddhist promise of continuing through samsara, the cycle of death and renewal.

In 1965, Ruth visits Kahakuloa, a remote village on Maui, where she learns about aloha 'āina, the Hawaiian devotion to nurturing the land, and begins to embrace her Hawaiian heritage. Rachel's kidneys eventually fail, a side effect of the drugs that cured her leprosy. She returns to Kalaupapa to die, and Ruth delivers a traditional Hawaiian eulogy at her funeral.

Afterward, Ruth visits the former site of Kapi'olani Home, now a residential subdivision. A small terrier appears and runs away. Ruth chases it, and the name "Only" bursts from her unbidden. Buried memories surface of the stray dog she loved at age four: his warmth, his heartbeat, their shared contentment. The dog vanishes, but Ruth smiles. Her Hawaiian half chooses to believe it was her 'aumakua, an ancestral spirit guiding her home. She feels a peace that has eluded her all her life. She is Japanese, she is Hawaiian; she is hapa, and she is whole.