If you are looking for a work of historical fiction that parallels governments' response to the current global pandemic you could certainly do worse than Aya Katz's “Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way.”
Part II of the book takes place during the period of internment of enemy aliens by the Japanese in China, 1943-1945, and it follows the major problems that the internment causes.
What could that possibly have to do with a 21st-century virus, you ask? Well, as horrible as that experience was for prisoners, throughout the book Katz makes explicit comparisons between what they experienced and what was happening in an ostensibly “free” America at the time. And if that was true for America circa 1945, I would argue that it is even more true today.
For example, at one point in the book the protagonist Marah Fallowfield is summoned to meet with the Japanese commandant of the internment camp. She was surprised to discover that he had lived in America. He tells her:
“After the war broke out, I was sent to an American internment camp for Japanese nationals. A year ago, I was a prisoner in the Hot Springs Civilian Assembly Center in Virginia. A civilian assembly center is what the Federal Government of the United States calls a camp for enemy aliens. But then I was ... repatriated. Sent back to Japan. And the Japanese government assigned me here. So here we are.”
“Send[ing] civilians to prison camps. Based on... nationality. That is not an American thing to do. It is unconstitutional,” replied Marah.
“It was under an executive order signed by President Roosevelt himself.”
“He's a bolshevik!” Marah spat out.
“Marah!” Sister John remonstrated.
“Well, he is! He confiscated all our gold and issued paper money, instead!”
As bad as life in 1943 was in an internment camp in China specifically, and more generally in America then, one could certainly argue that they had more freedom then than Americans have today with businesses being closed by the state, people being forced to wear face coverings in public, being arrested for attending church and so forth. As depicted in the novel, detainees were allowed to attend worship services in the camp.
And it isn't just FDR who gets his comeuppance in the book. In a flashback to before the war when she lived in America, Marah tells her mother:
“Of course. A murderer kills for vulgar, selfish reasons. But an assassin is a patriot, who strikes down a tyrant. Why, Brutus and Cassius were assassins when they cut down that usurper, Caesar, because he destroyed the republic. And John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln, because he put an end to our constitutional form of government.”
This book would make a great summer beach read for yourself. But if you do take it with you to the beach you best watch out for those prison guards! At least the detainees at Weihsien Internment Camp were allowed out into the sunlight more or less at will.
