Making An Impact With
Historical Fiction
by Jan Morrill
Most people have heard the George Santayana quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
History has often repeated itself in the past, and continues to repeat itself today. A simple internet search using keywords “history repeats examples” will provide details on historical repetition involving politics, war and culture.
I enjoy both reading and writing historical fiction. But what is the difference between history and historical fiction?
Where history looks back at an era through a reporting of facts, historical fiction takes a reader to an era, and sits him smack dab in the middle of it by allowing him to experience history through the eyes of a character.
I wrote the The Red Kimono because I was interested in the Japanese American internment during World War II. My mother was interned at the age of eight, and I wanted to learn more not only about that time in our nation’s
history—but also in my family’s history.
After my extensive research on what led to the internment, I see signs of history repeating itself in how we react to groups of people we fear will do us harm. The result of our fears does not arrive in one fell swoop. No, it arrives on a slippery slope.
The following excerpt is about one such slide down the slippery slope of fear. I wrote this scene through the eyes of Sachi, my eight-year old character who is based on my mother.
We all know what fear feels like. My hope in writing this scene from Sachi’s perspective was to help the reader see the other side of that fear—to feel the impact of it.
The scene takes place in Berkeley, California, on April 1, 1942. It is the first official notice Sachi and her mother see regarding the plans to round up anyone with Japanese ancestory: