Author Description

This book presents World War II and the American Occupation of Japan as experienced in Oita Prefecture through first-hand accounts of 40 Japanese men and women who lived through the war as students, midwives, nurses, teachers, journalists, soldiers, sailors, Kamikaze pilots, munitions factory workers, and housewives. Their stories of spirited support for the war, to loss of friends from American air raids, to hunger and fear of Americn occupiers are supplimented by local archives and newspaper reports from those years. Archival findings highlight the rarely chronicled training exercises for the attack on Pearl Harbor headquarted in Oita, the final Kamikaze attack against U.S. forces departing from Oita hours after the war ended, and the striking fact that the two Japanese representatives signing the surrender on the Battleship Missouri hailed from Oita. The book ends with the American Occupation forces and their interaction with the Japanese.