Mark Sakamoto's Forgiveness: A Gift From My Grandparents: Analysis

Mark Sakamoto’s Forgiveness: A Gift From My Grandparents is an intergenerational family biography, placed within the historical account of the Second World War. Mark bases his story on the interviews he took with his grandmother Mitsue Sakamoto and grandfather, Ralph MacLean, the stories they tell provide a unique vessel through which human tragedy can be understood. It also links two families, through understanding and forgiveness, which is the motivation Sakamoto needs to begin his own process towards recovery. Mark begins the story with his grandfather MacLean, who at the time lived on Magdalene Island and volunteered to serve oversees during the Second World War. While serving overseas MacLean is captured by the Japanese and becomes a

Sakamoto and MacLean were on different sides of the war, based purely on their race. So when Maclean came to Alberta on a hero’s welcome after the war, Mitsue could have been angry and refuse to meet with him because of the things that went wrong in her life. Instead, she is thinking of what foods to make and is culturally sensitive in wondering whether he was forced to learn how to use chopsticks in the camps, and whether he would be okay using them here. Therefore, their meeting over dinner and their subsequent friendship represented their forgiveness towards one another for the atrocities that occurred during the war. Moreover, by moving forward with an open heart and forgiving each other, they were able to symbolically bring two countries on opposite sides of the war together through the union of their two families and subsequently bring new life into the world. After the stories of Mitsue Sakamoto and Ralph MacLean, we receive the third dimension of the book three-quarters in and it is Mark Sakamoto’s own story. He paints a picturesque background of his childhood, with his mother in the kitchen making breakfast telling her two sons “I love you.” However, this picture is quickly erased with the divorce of his parents and his mothers subsequent death at age fifty-one due to