Description
Differences So Mighty is a novel opposing and sometimes aligning the lives of two minority group members. Sam Tanaka, a young Japanese-American, is taken from high school shortly after World War II begins and interned with the rest of his race, but he volunteers for, and is accepted by, the U. S. Army. Captured in battle, he survives brutality and resists interrogation by his Japanese captors only to find on his return after the war that prejudice has not diminished. Discouraged and embittered, he reenlists in the Army. Winston Doby, a young American Negro, volunteers for the Army during the Vietnam War to escape the harassment of a criminal past and economic deprivation resulting from racial bigotry. Like Tanaka, he is captured, but unlike him, succumbs to interrogation, defecting to Sweden. Finding prejudice there also, he is discouraged into returning to America and surrendering, a decision further influenced by C.I.D. agents, who convince him he is being used by the Communists. Both lives meet when Tanaka, who has since become an Army prosecutor, is chosen by the President of the United States to conduct the case against Doby. In this way, reasons the Chief Executive, the trial will be merely a clash of minorities, leaving the majority and the political complex unscathed. But Tanaka confounds the plot by administering his own peculiar brand of justice in a highly unusual and singularly humane manner. The story is told, not as two separate books, one succeeding the other, but simultaneously, a chapter of one book following that of another, a blend enabling the reader to more readily compare and contrast both lives. The work attempts to show that, though "differences so mighty" may separate those from widely divergent ethnic and environmental origins, yet understanding is possible through the mutual sharing of personal tragedy, and through the greater profoundness and tolerance of age.
