By Paula L. Woods
FROM: Los Angeles Times

Just as only James Ellroy could have written the Los Angeles Quartet and only Walter Mosley could have crafted Black Angelenos’ experiences into the Easy Rawlins mysteries, crime novelist and research maven Naomi Hirahara was destined to write “Clark and Division.”

“So much of my work has been informed by current events and little-known histories,” Hirahara says during a video call one warm summer morning. “While my earlier series involved cold cases where the past was dredged up to solve the current crime, ‘Clark and Division’ is actually my first real historical mystery.”

Out this week, “Clark and Division” spins a capacious crime saga out of a little-known historical episode — the resettlement of Japanese Americans interned during World War II from places like Los Angeles to the heart of Chicago.

Hirahara, an engaging presencewith a sweep of graying dark hair and pink transparent eyeglass frames, spent a decade as a reporter and editor at the Rafu Shimpo, L.A.’s Japanese American daily newspaper, during the battle over redress and reparations for the government’s wartime concentration camps. In those years she also embarked on an award-winning seven-book series featuring Mas Arai, an issei (first-generation) Japanese gardener and Hiroshima survivor whose background is a tribute to her father. She followed up with another series featuring an LAPD bicycle cop. Read Rest of Article Here