Milton Murayama

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Milton Murayama (b. April 10, 1923, Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii) is a Japanese-Hawaiian novelist and playwright. His first novel, All I Asking for Is My Body (1975) is considered a classic novel of the Japanese-Hawaiian experience before and during World War II.

1 Biography
2 Works
3 External links

[edit] Biography

Murayama was born in Hawaii to Japanese immigrant parents from Kyushu, making him a Nisei. When he was about 12, his family moved to a sugar plantation camp at Pu'ukoli'i. This was a company town of several hundred workers and their families that no longer exists. Murayama's experiences there provided the material for his novels. After graduating from high school in Lahaina in 1941, he attended the University of Hawaiʻi,. He served in the Territorial Guard after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but was abruptly discharged with the other Japanese-Americans. He soon volunteered with military intelligence. As a native speaker of Japanese he was sent to Taiwan as a translator to help facilitate the surrender and repatriation of Japanese troops there.

He returned to Hawaii in 1946. He received his B.A. from the University of Hawaiʻi in English and philosophy the following year. He then attended Columbia University under the G.I. Bill, earning a master's degree in Chinese and Japanese in 1950.

While still at Columbia, he completed the first draft of his first novel, All I Asking for Is My Body. A story that became the first chapter of the novel, "I'll Crack Your Head Kotsun", was published in the Arizona Quarterly in 1959. It was reprinted in 1968 in The Spell of Hawaii, an Hawaiian literary anthology. All I Asking for was not particularly well received when it was first published in 1975, but when it was reissued by the University of Hawaiʻi in 1980 it received critical acclaimed. It won the American Book Award that year. It has remained in print ever since, and has become a cult classic.

His second novel, Five Years on a Rock (1994) is a prequel to the first novel. It covers the years 1914 to 1935, and All I Asking for goes from 1935 to 1943. Both novels relate the experiences of the family of Oyama Isao and his wife Ito Sawa, immigrants to Hawaii from Japan, and their many children, including sons Toshio and Kiyoshi. Much of the dialog is in the creole used by the Japanese-Hawaiians of the author's acquaintance. The novels seem to be fictionalized autobiography. The chronologically earlier novel is told from the point of view of Ito Sawa, and the later one from that of her son Kiyoshi.

A third novel in the series, Plantation Boy, was published in 1998. Kiyoshi is again the protagonist. Like the first two novels, it was published by the University of Hawaiʻi Press. A fourth novel, A Good Life, is projected.

[edit] Works

[edit] Novels

All I Asking for Is My Body. Honolulu: 1975. Reprinted by the University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1988. ISBN 0824811720.
Five Years on a Rock. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1994. ISBN 0824816773.
Plantation Boy. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1998. ISBN 0824819659.