By Charles Lefebvre

Author Mark Sakamoto reflects on winning CBC’s Canada Reads

Apr 8, 2018 | 12:59 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Author Mark Sakamoto can remember the moments immediately after his book, Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents, was selected as the winner of CBC Canada Reads 2018 last month.

“Right from the announcement, handers came in and swept me into national media for the next four hours,” Mark said over the phone from Toronto earlier this week. “You just sort of get caught in this tornado. Your head is spinning, but you’re just trying to concentrate on the questions and answer the national media and just get through it. And then I had a really nice dinner with my family, and drank some champagne, and shed some tears.

Mark, who is originally from Medicine Hat, will be returning to speak about his experience on April 23.

Forgiveness, published in 2014, is a memoir of Mark’s maternal grandmother Mitsue Sakamoto and his paternal grandfather Ralph MacLean, and their experiences in the Second World War. Mitsue and her family were among the thousands of Japanese families interned in Alberta during the Second World War, while Ralph, who fought in the Pacific theatre, was a prisoner of war in Japan.

Mark, said it took him approximately 20 months to write the book.

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“That was 20 months of waking up extremely early, and staying up extremely late,” he said. “Weekends would be literally, of the 48 hours I had on the weekend, 35 of them would be writing. Christmases, Easters and summer vacations were all devoted to writing.

“It was really my wife Jade, who also grew up in Medicine Hat, who bore the brunt of our family life. We have two daughters, and I couldn’t have done it without her support and her significant leaning in, in terms of our family life.”

Mark says he’s currently contemplating writing his second book, but says the story needs to be incredibly important to him personally to begin writing again, remembering the experience of writing “Forgiveness” and it taking time away from his family.

The theme for this year’s Canada Reads program was “One Book To Open Your Eyes,” and Mark says he believes his story has done that for readers.

“I think in many ways, the themes of state-led racism and provincialism and ugly nationalism are probably even more pertinent in 2018 than they were in 2014,” he said. “I remember asking my grandmother Mitsue in the early stages of the interviews ‘Why didn’t you speak about this part of your life more as we were growing up?’ She looked at me, dead cold in the eyes and said, ‘Because hate can come back.”

Mark went on to say “I chuckled at the notion of the kinds of themes that I was talking about, in terms of government-led internment, the movement of people and the other being a bad thing. I chuckled at those kinds of resentments coming back today, and lo and behold, you can’t turn on CBC or CNN or pick up The Guardian in London, and not see these themes becoming, unfortunately, much more prevalent in today’s world, even if the few short years since publication.”

When asked about advice for aspiring writers, Mark shared two important tips that helped him.

“You really have to put down your phone,” he said. “Social media is an incredibly powerful tool. They invest a lot of money into algorithms that sort of give you what you’re thinking your wanting. The effect of that can be losing your own voice. You have to be on your own and quiet in your own body and mind to really hear your own authentic voice above the noise that is today. It’s a very noisy world, so you have to take that time and genuinely be with yourself, by yourself and in yourself.

“Number two, if you really want to write a book, you just have to put your butt in your seat and sit down and write. There’s no shortcuts around it. You need to put in the time.”

Mark’s author talk, originally scheduled for the Medicine Hat Public Library, will now take place in the Medicine Hat College Theatre. The event begins at 7 p.m. and is open to the public