The Yokota Officers Club (2001)

Sarah Bird's novel, a Knopf first edition of 2001, is narrated by Bernadette "Bernie" Root, who rejoins her eight-member Air Force family at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, the summer after her first year of college. Behind the comedy lies the family's earlier posting at Yokota Air Base in Japan, when her mother was happy, her father flew spy missions and their maid Fumiko was their best friend. (Open Library)

Watches

Seiko (unidentified model): When Bernie rejoins the family her father, Mace, asks where her watch is, an absence that outweighs everything else about how she is dressed, and she digs it out of her fringed shoulder bag: a silver Seiko on a black grosgrain band, bought in Tokyo when she was ten, just before they left Japan, and unworn for a year because love beads and Seikos do not go together. Her sister Kit has the same Seiko on a silver mesh band and the twins wear new quartz watches; all of them pull out their stems and move their minute hands to Mace's countdown (p. 25). Later Bernie notices that Kit is not wearing hers (p. 81). The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: The watch is our family totem. Kit has a Seiko exactly like mine except that she's traded the band in for a silver mesh type. (Sarah Bird, The Yokota Officers Club, scan cataloged as Alfred A. Knopf, 2001, p. 24; Internet Archive scan OCR)