by Sarah Bird
Mom: I hope you know how very proud he was of you.
Kay: Incredibly proud.
Sarah: One of the important moments of my life was that night after I’d sent you all the manuscript and he got on the line. I was so nervous. He said, “Well, I’ve read the book.” Then there was this big dramatic pause, and my heart stops. He goes on and says, “And I think it’s a magnificent achievement. I’m very proud of you.” That still undoes me. It was like something out of a made for TV movie. One of those utterly perfect moments that you don’t think happens in real life. I’m so grateful it did. I loved what he appreciated about the book. He kept asking how I’d come to understand so well how political a military career is, and how I’d gotten the information about the kind of reconnaissance work he did, since he would never talk specifically about the missions he’d been on. Much of that material had been declassified by the time I was doing the research, and I was reading books, reading about missions that I’m certain if he wasn’t actually on, he knew the men who were. I’d tell him stories from the books and say, “Dad, look, it’s declassified. You can talk about your missions. Tell me how you got the DFC. These other guys are writing books.” I’ll never forget his answer: “That’s their choice. I took the oath.” “I took the oath,” that level of loyalty, that complete lack of cynicism—it awes me.
Mom: Well, when you were doing the research, he told you stories that I’d never heard.
Sarah: That was wonderful, that we had something we could talk about.
Mom: I think it brought you two a lot closer together, because I think you both were looking for a way to be closer.
Martha: It got to the core of his career.
Kay: The core of his identity, his rules of honor and behavior were so in step with the military. You’re loyal, you don’t ask questions.
Sarah: But I also think that his sense of humor, that subversive sense of humor that he passed on to us, was how he was able to accept that life.
Mom: I guess you need to write an epilogue.
Sarah: What would that be?
Mom: You could tell what happened to all the Roots: Bernie is teaching English, Bob is a nuclear physicist, the twins are doing time.
Sarah: Great idea. I’ll write that up. Okay, anything anyone wants to add? Subtract? I’m gonna write this up for posterity.
Kay: Oh, Sarah, didn’t I mention? This is all off the record.
Sarah: Talk to my lawyer.
Kay: Talk to my lawyer!
Sarah: Bye, babies, I love you. Thank you.
Reek-reek. Reek-reek.
Dedicated to Lt. Col. John Aaron Bird
June 12, 1920—October 1, 2001
Reading Group Questions
and Topics for Discussion
Smells play a major role in The Yokota Officers Club. They are even used as titles for each chapter. What effect did they have on you as a reader?
The central image/metaphor of the book is the perfume factory. At the end of the book, Bernie says: “That honeysuckle is but one link in an endless limbic chain that contains all the smells of my family and of our life together.” Then she goes on to name all the smells in the book, concluding that “each smell is a blossom that combines with all the other smells the same way real flowers would in a real perfume factory where the days of sunshine and growing, the days of storm and drought, the times of plenty, times of want, what the flowers got, what they didn’t get, they’re all squeezed together under preposterous pressure or boiled or tinctured or distilled into a few drops of a smell so beautiful it can make you remember everything.” Do you agree with this metaphor of how family unity/memories are created?
Understanding what you do about Moe, Macon, Fumiko, and Bernie, is there anything any of them could have done to change their fate?
Are the pressures a military life puts on soldiers—particularly the kind of military life Macon Root had, involving highly classified, highly dangerous missions—compatible with being a warm and loving spouse? Parent?
Have you known any military families? How much did you know about their lives? Did the novel give you a greater appreciation of those lives?
It seems that military brats enjoyed their peripatetic childhoods in direct relation to how extroverted they were. The more outgoing they naturally were, the more they thrived on the constant moving. How do you think you would have fared as a military child? As a military wife?
Have you ever had an experience similar to the one Bernie had when you return to the scene of a childhood memory and find it strangely shrunken or diminished in some way? How is this idea of a diminution, of a degradation, of, in some cases, a fall from grace, carried out in other ways in the book? In Bernie’s experience of Okinawa as contrasted with her memories of Japan? In Mace’s career? In the military in general from World War II to the Vietnam War? In Moe’s experience both with the military and with her marriage?
Did you ever reveal a secret as a child? What were the consequences? Can Bernie or any child of that age be held responsible for unkept secrets?
Moe and Mace seem to have come to a stalemate in their marriage. Who is responsible? What do you predict will happen to them? What do you think should happen?
Contrast the two mothers in the book, Moe and Fumiko’s mother. How does each one react to the stresses placed upon her and her family by their respective countries?
One of the themes of the novel is silence, the silence of men flying reconnaissance missions, but more especially the silence of the women around them. How does each of these characters find her voice: Bernie? Moe? Fumiko?
This novel straddles the line between fiction and memoir. Does it take the best from each approach or the worst? What do you like and dislike about the two different approaches?
Did you believe that Mace and Fumiko had had an affair? Were you relieved that they hadn’t?
Since Bernie could not have ever seen her father acting as Wingo’s copilot, how is the crucial relationship they had in flight demonstrated?
Humor and tragedy collide throughout the novel. Do you prefer fiction that blends these parts of life or keeps them separate?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SARAH BIRD is the author of four previous novels: Virgin of the Rodeo, The Boyfriend School, Alamo House, and The Mommy Club. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, George, and their son, Gabriel.