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The Yokota Officers Club: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) Paperback – October 29, 2002

4.3 out of 5 stars 140

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“A GEM, POLISHED AND FACETED IN A WAY THAT PULLED ME INTO THE HEART OF IT WITH THE FIRST PARAGRAPH. . . . Important, touching, meaningful, and uplifting.”
–JEANNE RAY
Chicago Tribune

After a year away at college, military brat Bernadette Root has come “home” to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, to spend the summer with her bizarre yet comforting clan. Ruled by a strict, regimented Air Force Major father, but grounded in their mother’s particular brand of humor, Bernie’s family was destined for military greatness during the glory days of the mid-’50s. But in Base life, where an unkempt lawn is cause for reassignment, one fateful misstep changed the Roots’ world forever. Yet the family’s silence cannot keep the wounds of the past from reemerging . . . nor can the memory fade of beloved Fumiko, the family’s former maid, whose name is now verboten. And the secrets long ago covered up in classic military style–through elimination and denial–are now forcing their way to the surface for a return engagement.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“SARAH BIRD WRITES FICTION WITH SUCH ENERGY AND SNAP, HER NOVELS SEEM TO BE IN MOTION. . . . There’s a wheelbarrow of talent in the writer who can keep a reader laughing right up to the moment of startled apprehension when the depth of sorrow in the family’s history becomes clear.”
The Dallas Morning News

“SWEET, POWERFUL, AND TERRIFYING, Sarah Bird’s talent . . . [is] nothing less than wondrous. This book is a beautiful and breathtaking treasure.”
–RICK BASS

“A LOVELY READ . . . [This novel] is a coming-of-age story, but one so ably fashioned, so tender at its core, that it can touch off both youthful longings and mature regrets in any reader with the slightest susceptibility to either.”
New York Daily News




From the Inside Flap

?A GEM, POLISHED AND FACETED IN A WAY THAT PULLED ME INTO THE HEART OF IT WITH THE FIRST PARAGRAPH. . . . Important, touching, meaningful, and uplifting.?
?JEANNE RAY
Chicago Tribune

After a year away at college, military brat Bernadette Root has come ?home? to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, to spend the summer with her bizarre yet comforting clan. Ruled by a strict, regimented Air Force Major father, but grounded in their mother?s particular brand of humor, Bernie?s family was destined for military greatness during the glory days of the mid-?50s. But in Base life, where an unkempt lawn is cause for reassignment, one fateful misstep changed the Roots? world forever. Yet the family?s silence cannot keep the wounds of the past from reemerging . . . nor can the memory fade of beloved Fumiko, the family?s former maid, whose name is now verboten. And the secrets long ago covered up in classic military style?through elimination and denial?are now forcing their way to the surface for a return engagement.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (October 29, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 367 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345452771
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345452771
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.53 x 0.87 x 8.21 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 140

About the author

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Sarah Bird
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Sarah Bird is a bestselling novelist, screenwriter, essayist, and journalist who has lived in Austin, Texas since long before the city became internationally cool. She has published ten novels and two books of essays. Her eleventh novel, LAST DANCE ON THE STARLITE PIER--a gripping tale set in the secret world of the dance marathons of the Great Depression--will be released on April 12th.

Her last novel, DAUGHTER OF A DAUGHTER OF A QUEEN--inspired by the true story of the only woman to serve with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers--was named an All-time Best Books about Texas by the Austin American-Statesman; Best Fiction of 2018, Christian Science Monitor; Favorite Books of 2018, Texas Observer; a One City, One Book choice of seven cities; and a Lit Lovers Book Club Favorites.

Sarah was a finalist for The Dublin International Literary Award; an ALEX award winner; Amazon Literature Best of the Year selection; a two-time winner of the TIL’s Best Novel award; a B&N’s Discover Great Writers selection; a New York Public Libraries Books to Remember; an honoree of the Texas Writers Hall of Fame; an Amazon Literature Best of the Year selection; a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship; and an Austin Libraries Illumine Award for Excellence in Fiction winner. In 2014 she was named Texas Writer of the Year by the Texas Book Festival and presented with a pair of custom-made boots on the floor of the Texas Senate Chamber.

Sarah is a nine-time winner of Austin Best Fiction Writer award. She was recently honored with the University of New Mexico’s 2020 Paul Ré Award for Cultural Advocacy. In 2015 Sarah was one of eight winners selected from 3,800 entries to attend the Meryl Streep Screenwriters’ Lab. Sarah was chosen in 2017 to represent the Austin Public Library as the hologram/greeter installed in the Austin Downtown Library. Sarah was a co-founder of The Writers League of Texas.

She has been an NPR Moth Radio Hour storyteller; a writer for Oprah’s Magazine, NY Times Sunday Magazine and Op Ed columns, Chicago Tribune, Real Simple, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Salon, Daily Beast, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, MS, Texas Observer; Alcalde and a columnist for years for Texas Monthly. As a screenwriter, she worked on projects for Warner Bros., Paramount, CBS, National Geographic, Hallmark, ABC, TNT, as well as several independent producers.

She and her husband enjoy open-water swimming and training their corgi puppy not to eat the furniture.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
140 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2002
"The Yokota Officers Club" is not only a convincing coming-of-age account of a daughter of a peripatetic military family; it is a sensitive and evocative exploration of the themes of family tension, hidden secrets and repressed fears. Author Sarah Bird, drawing on her own life's experience as a "military brat," has created a magnificent protagonist in the isolated and marginalized Bernadette "Bernie" Root, whose profound alienation from her life's circumstances compels her to discover the root souce of her quietly agonizing loneliness. Written with genuine compassion and insight, the novel is a stunning success.
The Roots emerge as an archtypical military family. Bernie's father, Mace, a heroic pilot whose storied career has been scythed by a decision beyond the comprehension of his family, is not only icily dictatorial at home; he is an emotionally stunted husband and father who issues orders and synchronizes and subordinates his wife and children to his floundering prospects for promotion. Kit, Bernie's younger sister, is everything her older sister is not. Gregarious, glamorous and charismatic, Kit adapts to the flux and transitory nature of the Roots' lives. She stands in dramatic counterpoint to the silent suffering of Bernie, a reserved, introspective intellectual, who, seemingly by osmosis, aborbs the pain, frustration and bitterness exuded by her mother, Moe. Not even called mother by her daughter, Moe is a strong, self-possessed woman whose decision to marry into a military life generates recriminations, unspoken bitterness and near manic combat with the restrictions of being the wife of an Air Force officer during the Cold War period of the 1950s and the escalating violence of Viet Nam in the 1960s.
Set in the pivotal year of 1968, the novel revolves around Bernie's willed exploration of her family's past, one which pivots around their extended stay at the Yokota Air Force Base in Japan during the 1950s. There, the family's maid, Fumiko, becomes both a physical and psychological presence that somehow holds the secret to both the father's demise and the family's deterioration into emotional dysfunction. Bird is nothing less than brilliant as she explores the layered relationships Fumiko has with Mace, Moe and Bernie and how those relationships catalyze the tumultous changes within the family.
Using the effective metaphor of smells, fascinating and complex characterization, and powerful use of selective memory, Sarah Bird's novel instructs as well as recounts. Bernie's anguish, her isolated alienation and her deeply-felt sense of personal inferiority transform the plot into a serious analysis of troubling feelings most of us experience at the hands of our family. To what degree do children assume responsibility for the sharp shards of parental discontent? How do combative siblings resolve mutual animosity and mistrust? Are silences and repressed secrets effective means of eliminating parental frustration and betrayal? How much does a man owe his country, and to what extent does a wife owe her husband blind allegiance? "The Yokota Officers Club" answers these profoundly vital questions with courage, insight and grace. This memoir-like novel is little less than exceptional.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2019
Wow! I'm an Air Force brat too, and I have to say, my life was nothing like this! If the difference is that Dad wasn't a pilot, then I'm delighted he wasn't! That I'm an only child may also have helped make the difference.

Aside from that, the story is well paced, although I skipped two of the earlier chapters, and lost no sense of the story. It does illustrate the way a military kid learns to be independent of the world, as a set of new orders can totally change a brat's world. I had the unfortunate luck to land in a non-military town in time for high school, and have to deal with classmates who had known one another since first grade, leaving me to spend four years as the 'new kid' who they never pretended belonged in 'their ' world. Which, buy the time graduation finally arrived, I didn't want to belong to. I don't attend reunions as there is nobody I care to be reunited with.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2023
Not only was this book funny for general readers, if you were ever a military brat or lived at Yokota, you'll love the references to that life. I'm an Air Force brat, lived at Yokota 1960 - 1963 so everything about this book for me brought memories good & bad. Thank you Sarah Bird.
Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2015
Extremely Entertaining ! A few weeks ago, I visited the Yokota Officers club and happened to notice a copy of this book in the trophy display case. I was determined to obtain a copy and was pleasantly surprised when it was in stock at Amazon. I read the book almost non stop from cover to cover; it was totally entertaining with lots of twists and turns. The author's style of narrating the book through the eyes of a young military dependent daughter created a story which developed with childhood recall, vague memories, hidden secrets all of which converged to making the story highly entertaining. The colorful descriptions of everyday living conditions on Okinawa and in Japan were exceptionally well done and gave the reader an insight, often sad, often humorous, of what it must have been like to be a military dependent trying to adjust to new surroundings. I can't say enough good things about this fabulous book. It was phenomenal !

The Yokota Officers club at Yokota AFB Japan is now an destination for us. Every time that we visit the club, I try to visualize the events described in the book. Nothing much seems to have changed; the stage and bar are still being used for various events and entertaining shows, the atmosphere of the club could easily take one back to the 50's or 60's when the fictional story described in the book took place.
I just purchased two more copies to share with a friend who accompanied us on our last visit to the club and I am anxious to hear her reaction to the book.
4 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2016
I was tossed back to memories of Yokota when I was a young military wife. I don't remember the ugliness of some of the book, but maybe I was too happy and naive to see it at the time. I do remember the luxury of a young woman, Sumiko, who helped me take care of our home and two little babies while my husband was flying into typhoons as his job. She became a dear friend and I wish we had found a way to stay in touch. Fussa and the kindness of people around me there still are with me, 57 years later.
2 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2002
Sarah Bird brillantly captured the tumbleweed existence of brat-life, a life I only know too well, both as an Air Force brat and later as an Air Force 20-year careerman. She certainly hit all the right buttons - terrifying first days after mid-school year moves, security of having a dependent ID card, and joy of five-cent cokes at the teen center. But the nomadic military life only served as the backdrop for a riveting story about Bernie Root, daughter of Major Mason "Wild" Root - Air Force RB-50 pilot, and her resolute search for an answer about changing family relationships. The story is very funny, very exciting, and very sad. The day after I finished the book, I came back to reread the ending to make sure I hadn't missed anything. I wanted more.
4 people found this helpful
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