Forgiveness

WINNER of CBC Canada Reads

Finalist for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the OLA Evergreen Award

#1 National Bestseller

When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Like many young Canadian soldiers, Ralph was captured by the Japanese army. He would spend the war in prison camps, enduring pestilence, beatings and starvation, as well as a journey by hell ship to Japan to perform slave labour, while around him his friends and countrymen perished. Back in Canada, Mitsue and her family were expelled from their home by the government and forced to spend years eking out an existence in rural Alberta, working other people's land for a dollar a day.

By the end of the war, Ralph emerged broken but a survivor. Mitsue, worn down by years of back-breaking labour, had to start all over again in Medicine Hat, Alberta. A generation later, at a high school dance, Ralph's daughter and Mitsue's son fell in love.

Although the war toyed with Ralph's and Mitsue's lives and threatened to erase their humanity, these two brave individuals somehow surmounted enormous transgressions and learned to forgive. Without this forgiveness, their grandson Mark Sakamoto would never have come to be.

“An incredible story of God’s grace, as well as a horrific testimony to the evils the human heart is capable of executing.” - Christian Courier

“Extraordinary and touching.” - Elle Canada

“It’s a violent world we live in, but Mark Sakamoto’s Forgiveness: A Gift From My Grandparents reminds us that things do change.” - National Post

“An unforgettable story about the power of forgiveness, set against one of the darkest periods in Canada’s history. Mark Sakamoto tells his family’s story with grace and at times brutal honesty. Painful and poignant, Forgiveness is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.” - Mellissa Fung, author of Under an Afghan Sky

“This book shares many examples of powerful life lessons that inspire us to embrace change as a gift from learning, and remind us that making peace with our past is possible if we hold on to what we’ve learned from our experiences.” - Shania Twain

“Mark Sakamoto’s family story shows how individuals—the author’s Canadian grandfather, a POW of the Japanese, and his Japanese-Canadian grandmother, sent to a work camp in Alberta—ultimately make their own history. This is a quintessential Canadian story, where family history is not forgotten but does not imprison its participants.” - Nathan M. Greenfield, author of The Damned

“This is an astonishing book . . . a funny, heartbreaking story of a family scarred by history’s pain and their own self-destructiveness, yet redeemed by stoic endurance and the capacity for forgiveness. You’re going to remember this book.” - Michael Ignatieff

“Poignantly elegant.” - Maclean's

“Through stories of starvation and suffering, outright racism and imprisonment, Sakamoto offers a distinct and dark vantage point to Canadian history--one that does away with any geopolitical binaries of good and evil.” - The Globe and Mail