In 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to the internment camps during World War II. As the owner displays and unfurls a Japanese parasol, Henry a Chinese American, remembers a young Japanese forged a bond of friendship and innocent love that transcended the prejudices of their Old World ancestors. After Keiko and her family were evacuated to the internment camps, she and Henry could only hope that their promise to each other could be kept. Now, forty years alter, Henry explores the hotel's basement doe the Okabe family's belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot even begin to measure. His search will take him on a journey to revisit the sacrifice he has made for family, for love, for country.
- Shelfari
List of Characters:
- Henry Lee: main character through which the story is told. He is an American of chinese descent, trying to fit in.
- Keiko Okabe: Main character - Female, second generation American, of Japanese descent.
- Sheldon: Henry's lifelong friend - a sax player with his own struggles, both with being African-American in the '40s and with breaking into the professional jazz scene in Seattle.
- Marty Lee: Henry's son.
- Chaz Preston: Neighborhood bully at Rainier Elementary.
- Mrs. Beatty: School lunchroom lady
- Samantha: Marty's fiancee
- Mr.Lee: Henry's father who is stubborn and strict Chinese nationalist
- Mrs Lee: Henry's mother who is kind and forgiving to Henry's ways, but bound to her husband's dictates by tradition.
- Ethel Lee, neé Chen: Henry's late wife; who died of lung cancer.
Next Meeting March 7th
