Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

The next day Henry returns home from a walk to find Marty waiting on his front porch steps. Marty seems nervous, and Henry worries that Marty has to come to confront him about keeping Ethel at home during her last days rather than in a hospice house. This decision is the source of an unresolved argument between them.

Marty instead reveals that he has something else to tell his father, something he’d put off telling partly because of Ethel’s illness and partly because he doesn’t know how Henry will react. Marty’s news is that he has a fiancée named Samantha, who is Caucasian. Marty expects Henry to disapprove, the way Henry’s father would have disapproved of a relationship between mixed races. But Samantha greets Henry warmly, and Henry gives Marty his immediate approval.

Henry makes tea for Marty and Samantha, and talks with them as he prunes a plum tree in his backyard. Marty has told Samantha a number of things about Henry, including his love for gardening, fishing, and jazz. He also told Samantha about the plum tree, but Henry corrects this story for them. The tree grew from a sapling Henry cut from a tree in Japantown on the night Marty was born. Feeling that the lines of communication have been opened with his son, Henry invites Marty and Samantha to meet him for tea at the Panama Hotel.

The narrative returns to 1942. Henry, horrified by the burning of precious items in Nihonmachi, returns home determined to talk to his parents about Keiko. Instead, there are unexpected visitors in his home: Chaz Preston and his father Charles, a building developer. Charles Preston owns buildings in Seattle’s International District but would like to begin developing property in Japantown—property that recently housed Japanese Americans who have been forced out of the area. Mr. Preston needs Henry’s father’s support and advice, as a prominent member of the Chinese community. Henry serves as an interpreter between the two men while Chaz mocks him in the background.

Mr. Preston begins by announcing his plans to buy a vacant lot behind the Japanese newspaper, in hopes of driving the newspaper out of business and securing that property as well. Henry translates for his father. His father replies that the Japanese owners have been arrested and Mr. Preston can buy the property from the bank. Henry, shocked by this, begins to manipulate the conversation through his translation, telling Mr. Preston that the land is part of a Japanese cemetery and it is bad luck to build on the land. He tells his father that Mr. Preston wishes to develop jazz clubs on the property. Both men are enraged by these turns in the conversation and cannot come to an agreement. The experience is awful for Henry, who believes he has done the right thing, although it is the first time he has deliberately and blatantly disobeyed his father.

That night, after he has gone to bed, the phone rings. It is Keiko asking for Henry’s help. He agrees to meet her in the park in Nihonmachi in an hour, which means he must sneak out of the house after his parents are asleep. When he meets up with Keiko, she tells him that she stayed home from school to make sure she wasn’t separated from her family. More and more Japanese Americans have been arrested, and a curfew has been imposed on Japantown.

Keiko asks him for a favor: Her parents have asked her to burn their family photos, but she simply can’t. Instead, she asks Henry to hide the photos for her, and he agrees. She has filled a small Radio Flyer wagon with the photos, and Henry promises to keep them safe for her. In thanks, Keiko hugs him. Henry is surprised by the warmth of her touch.

Henry pulls Keiko’s red wagon toward Chinatown, trying not to attract attention to himself. Many of the Japanese businesses that he passes have American flags in their windows to show their allegiance. Henry passes a boy painting on a storefront and realizes it is Denny Brown, painting anti-Japanese slogans. Chaz Preston and another boy, Carl Parks, are nearby, vandalizing other businesses. They give chase to Henry, who realizes that the only way he can escape them and keep the Okabes’ belongings safe is to sit on the wagon and speed downhill. During Henry’s wild ride, other people scatter out of the way and cheer him as he passes. He finally stops by banging into a police car and then has to talk his way out of the situation with the police officer—which he does by telling the truth. Finally back home, Henry hides the Okabes’ photo albums behind the bottom drawer of his dresser.