This book was suppose to come out in print in 1941, but due to the attack on Pearl Harbor and anti-Japanese propaganda, it postponed its release until 1949. Toshio Mori is a master of storytelling. These collections of short stories should be with such classics as Hemingway and Saroyan. Yokohoma, California is both heart-felt and humorous. It is one of the best books on the Asian American experience.

Even though Sau-ling Cynthia Wong notes that "no other Asian-American writer since has been able to match Mori's community portraits for mellowness," his portraits of Japanese-American life just before World War II show the strain of a double identity at that time. (Even the title itself serves to illustrate the cultural binary.) Mori's prose is sparse, yet it is not cold. In all of the characters, from Sessue Matoi, the philosopher who "must be drunk and sober at the same time," to "the woman who makes swell donuts," there is a warmth and humanity throughout every story, even while the hints of the coming war begin to appear