The reprinting of this book makes accessible to a new generation of readers the pioneering short fiction of the man William Saroyan called the first real Japanese-American writer (Introduction to first edition). First announced by the Caxton Printers for publication in 1942 and finally published in 1949, Yokohama, California suffered a vexed debut and a short life of obscurity and neglect. Given but scant notice by reviewers, Mori\u27s slim collection was received even by his ethnic peers more out of loyal curiosity than any shock of recognition. A unique record of Japanese American life in Northern California in the decades just before World War II, the book became one of the lost volumes of American literature
