Manzanar to Mount Whitney: The Life and Times of a Lost Hiker

by Hank Umemoto

Overview

This intimate memoir offers a poignant, at times humorous account of Japanese American life in California before and after WWII.

In 1942, fourteen-year-old Hank Umemoto gazed out a barrack window at Manzanar Internment Camp, saw the silhouette of Mount Whitney against an indigo sky, and vowed that one day he would climb to the top. Fifty-seven years and a lifetime of stories later, at the age of seventy-one, he reached the summit.

As Umemoto wanders through the mountains of California’s Inland Empire, he recalls pieces of his childhood on a grape vineyard in the Sacramento Valley, his time at Manzanar, where beauty and hope were maintained despite the odds, and his later career as proprietor of a printing firm—sharing it all with grace, honesty, and unfailing humor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597142229
Publisher:	Heyday
Publication date:	11/23/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	231
File size:	815 KB

About the Author

Hank Umemoto was born in 1928 to immigrant grape farmers in Florin, a rural community near Sacramento, California. After his release from camp, he moved to Los Angeles, where he spent the first three and a half years living on skid row. After finishing high school, he worked to support himself and his mother while attending Los Angeles City College. During the Korean War, he served overseas in the army with the 38th Military Intelligence Service. After his discharge, he attended Cal State Los Angeles using funds from the GI Bill, then married, raised a family, and worked in a variety of trades and businesses. His jobs included gardener, owner of a jewelry store, owner of a mail-order business, and insurance agent with Cal Western Life. He eventually started a print shop and remained in the printing business for thirty-two years, until his retirement in his mid-seventies. He now writes for enjoyment during his sunset years.

Table of Contents

Prologue ix

Introduction xi

Chapter 1 Icehouse Canyon 1

Chapter 2 Bare Hands, Pure Guts, and Determination 11

Chapter 3 A Day in the Life of a Hobo 28

Chapter 4 The Night I Slept with Daisy 45

Chapter 5 "Because we're Japs, that's how come" 63

Chapter 6 Hello, Manzanar 78

Chapter 7 Twenty-Five-Dollar Stipend 100

Chapter 8 A Life in Skid Row 116

Chapter 9 The Turbulent Years 140

Chapter 10 Slum Venture 162

Chapter 11 Black Outhouse Beacon 173

Chapter 12 Closure 184

Acknowledgements 193

About the Author 195

Editorial Reviews

''An entertaining romp...He’s the closest writer in Niseidom to write like Charles Bukowski.''—Rafu Shimpo

''Equal parts memoir and hiking diary, the book's Owens Valley landscapes give way to tales about Umemoto's many lives: as janitor, dishwasher, skid row denizen, soldier, jeweler, and writer.''—Los Angeles Magazine

”A Nisei’s story of being confined in an internment camp during World War II and hardscrabble years afterward, interspersed with a diary of high-altitude hiking.”—Kirkus Reviews

“With both grace and humor, Hank Umemoto tells stories of resilience, adventure, and courage. His engaging memoir is a welcome addition to the literature of the Japanese American experience.”—Maggie Wittenburg, executive director, Manzanar History Association

From the Publisher

A Nisei's story of being confined in an internment camp during World War II and hardscrabble years afterward, interspersed with a diary of high-altitude hiking. Manzanar was the internment camp where teenage Umemoto, with his family and many other Japanese Americans, was relocated for three years during the war. Mt. Whitney, "The Big One," was visible from Manzanar's plywood barracks then. However, it took nearly 60 years before the author, as a senior citizen, was able to scramble to the top of the formidable promontory. Though Umemoto reveals a bit about California's Japanese-American culture, the author's story is mild and not particularly deep. Without much drama, Umemoto sets forth his journey from internment to success as a print-shop proprietor, and he discusses two marriages and his time in the military in Tokyo. Interposed are narratives of difficult trudges where the author was lost, fatigued or frozen--though his adventures never take on a sense of actual danger. Once, he wished he brought a Gore-Tex jacket, and once, an attempt to gnaw a frozen energy bar was fruitless since his dentures couldn't make a dent in the thing. Perhaps this is the sort of intermittent memory piece that might attract intrepid readers, but the clear metaphor doesn't work. What might have been an affecting memoir, a different sort of American story, reveals little that is memorable. Though touching on the unique Japanese-American experience, this is ultimately an inoffensive, pedestrian trek.

Kirkus Reviews