nwasianweekly.com
July 29, 2006

Sleeping on Potatoes: A Lumpy Adventure From Manzanar to the Corporate Tower, by Carl Nomura. Published by Erasmus Books, 2003.
Nomura’s memoir is a rollicking account of one Japanese American’s journey from a Depression-era childhood to life as a top-level pioneer in the semiconductor industry.

Born to a tyrannical, abusive father wholly incapable of supporting a family, Nomura nevertheless describes his early experiences in a comical light that makes the memoir both endearing and highly readable. The story begins with his parents’ picture-bride marriage, in which Nomura’s mother Mizuko, a fallen aristocrat from Hiroshima, comes to America hoping for a better life. To her surprise and dismay, Mizuko discovers that she is in fact her husband’s second wife, and that he has abandoned his former family without contributing a cent to their welfare. Into this milieu Nomura is born, as the six-person family grinds out an existence during the Depression working on railroads and in grocery stores.

Much of the early story focuses on how Nomura fashions an ambitious goal for himself despite overwhelmingly debilitating odds: “Growing up as a child of the Great Depression years, I felt deeply the family’s total preoccupation with survival. … Talk was never about possible future careers, college, politics or social problems. Everyone assumed I would become a truck driver or a farm worker.” In high school, however, Nomura has a life-changing experience that forever instills in him the importance of academic success. He works hard to receive outstanding grades, especially in algebra and geometry, giving him the confidence to imagine his future as a scientist.

From his life as an internee at Manzanar to his experiences serving in the U.S. Army, the memoir is packed with anecdotes that richly convey his personal life as well as the circumstances of the times. Particularly compelling is Nomura’s return to Manzanar after 30 years. There he reads on a plaque: “May the injustices and humiliation suffered here as a result of hysteria, racism and economic exploitation never emerge again.” The internment camp survivor writes a poem that brings personal closure to an embarrassing moment in American history: “My body begs to stop, but still I fight/From whence it comes? The will! The heart? The mind?/A whack, a whack, a thousand more with might.”

The most exciting part of the book occurs when Nomura begins working as an executive at Honeywell, the corporation that specializes in building superconductors. After earning a doctorate in mathematics, Nomura works his way up the corporate ladder to achieve a high-level management position in the firm. Nomura eventually plays a leading role in pioneering cutting-edge technology in both the United States and Japan, earning him wide acclaim in the superconductor field. Nomura describes his corporate rise with characteristic wit and humor (sometimes self-deprecatory), punctuating the narrative with interesting stories of corporate life. At retirement, Nomura is able to say that he has lived a full life, one filled with personal and professional fulfillment.

Sleeping on Potatoes is a well-written memoir by a Port Townsend author who deserves wider recognition. A more detailed account of the Manzanar years would have given the story a richer historical context, but as the book is not strictly intended to be an internment narrative, readers can instead learn from Nomura’s varied and inspiring life. The text is also interspersed with poems authored by Nomura in various forms (some poems are quite good), which provide a kind of relief for the reader at the end of each chapter. Structured in bite-sized anecdotes and written in a lively, energetic style, this memoir is a touching story about one man’s courage to surmount difficulties and achieve his version of the American dream.

Paul Kim can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.

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