Born in Yokohama, Leslie Helm found himself a gaijin, or foreigner, growing up as an outsider in both Japan and the United States, straddling two cultural identities without belonging to either one. This identity crisis, and the challenges of raising adopted Japanese children with his wife in an outwardly looking Caucasian home, ultimately prompted the Los Angeles Times correspondent to rediscover his family's roots.
Yokohama Yankee traces five generations of Helm's family in Japan, starting with his German great-grandfather Julius' immigration to Yokohama in 1869. Julius and his Japanese wife, Hiro, had eight children, many who would go on to influence and steer the powerful Helm Brothers company through pivotal moments in Yokohama's history. Increasingly insular and xenophobic policies enacted by the Japanese during World War II resulted in the family's ultimate rejection of their Asian heritage, seeking to avoid both Japanese political prisoner camps and U.S. internment camps.
Helm draws upon his great grandfather's unpublished memoir and primary source material from the Japanese government archives, personal letters, artifacts and interviews with surviving employees of Helm Brothers and family members to bring his poignant and heartbreaking homecoming to life. Through his research and his relationships with the Japanese people, Helm comes to view Japan not as the isolationist country of his foreign correspondent days, but as the warm, embracing presence that welcomed a German outsider and helped him succeed beyond the strictest of racial and political constraints. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant