East Wind, Rain Caroline Paul William Morrow, 260 pp, $23.95

‘Japan will notify her consuls of war decision in her foreign broadcasts as weather report at end. North Wind Cloudy Russia. West Wind Clear Britain. East Wind Rain United States.’

–U.S. War Department’s translation of Japanese ‘Winds Code,’ intercepted Nov. 19, 1941

Caroline Paul’s solid first novel, East Wind, Rain, starts quickly. There’s no foreshadowing, no introduction, no background. There’s only this–the foundation of the tale: a plane crash. And with that, the story takes off. With historical accuracy and with a fine grasp on the beauty of the language, Paul’s based-on-real-life novel breaks into a complex little account of a little known occurrence that made an enormous impact on our nation’s history.

The time is 1941. The crashed plane is a Japanese fighter plane fresh from the attack on Pearl Harbor. On his army’s orders, airman Shigenori Nishikaichi crash lands his plane on Ni’ihau, whose residents are unaware that the territory was the target of an attack. Also unknown to the islanders is that with the arrival of the enemy Japanese pilot comes the unleashing of a different kind of foe: Yoshio, one of only three Japanese-Americans on the island. While the rest of the villagers wonder what this man is doing on their restricted, haole-owned island, Yoshio and his wife, Irene, are able to understand the pilot’s account of the morning’s events and, in an identity crisis-induced decision, choose to side with the pilot and agree to help him destroy his military papers and downed plane, thereby helping him save face, and abandoning all loyalty to their neighbors and the United States. According to Paul, the events on Ni’ihau were used to justify President Roosevelt’s internment camps.

Paul’s creation of Yoshio as a weak, angry man who sells out his loyalty to his friends for the sake of misplaced nationalism is wonderfully insightful–and perhaps even more successful is her gift for making us empathize with Yoshio and Irene despite their quickness to betray. We suspect our empathy is borne not of a reader’s penchant for prose and well-crafted storytelling–though both exist in Paul’s work in spades–but rather of a real sense of understanding of the emotional wrangling that the couple endures as a result of being outsiders in the world in which they live. We don’t hate the couple for siding with the enemy. We actually–perhaps disturbingly so understand them.

Paul paces the story well, moving seamlessly between characters and their perspectives, thereby toying a bit with our own loyalties, but never so much so that we forget what’s important: that the Ni’ihauans–Yoshio included–resolve the issue at hand. And quickly: The entire story takes place over a seven-day period.

Paul’s use of the Hawaiian language and her retelling of that one week in history against the backdrop of the culture of the isolated Ni’ihau is, for the most part, spot on. She’s respectful and careful.

Her depiction of the Christian owner of the island, Mr. Robinson is neither moralistic nor damning. His decision to rule his small piece of Hawai’i with the moral stringency of a Quaker seems at once maddening and incredibly prudent.

Paul seems to be asking us to consider the notion that sometimes, the means justify the ends. Still though, we don’t question the validity of Yoshio’s hatred for the haole owner. How can we? The struggle to do what one thinks is right resounds loudly.

Resist the urge to breeze through the book as if it is merely a novel. The readability masks the potency of its intricacies. Its intricacies make the story ours. More than any group of readers out there, these details reflect us. Read it with that in mind.n