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Tattered kimonos in Japan : remaking lives from memories of World War II / Robert Rand.

by Rand, Robert, 1953- author.

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Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press, [2024]

World War, 1939-1945 -- Japan -- Hiroshima-shi -- Personal narratives.

World War, 1939-1945 -- Japan -- Nagasaki-shi -- Personal narratives.

World War, 1939-1945 -- Participation, Japanese -- Public opinion.

Japan -- History -- 1945- -- Anecdotes.

9780817321772 (hardcover) :

0817321772 (hardcover)

War, memory, and culture.

xv, 246 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

The tattered kimono -- Watanabe-san and the mound -- Scars and the impersonal nature of war -- Apocalypse -- Sacred images, two mothers -- Missionaries, banishment, and resurrection -- Searching for the kimono-draped nursing mother and child -- Searching for the rice ball boy and his mother -- Hibaku no Maria -- Tokyo -- Tokushima -- Fukuoka -- Anne Frank in Japan -- The holocaust of Hiroshima -- A Japanese letter from Auschwitz -- The gulag POW -- Cloth man -- Atrocities and dead souls -- Repentence and apology : the war criminal's son -- Repentence and apology : the wartime emperor's son -- Tsunami : flattened landscapes -- Meltdown : radiation refugees.

"Since John Hersey's Hiroshima-the classic account, published in 1946, of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of that city-very few books have examined the meaning and impact of World War II through the eyes of Japanese men and women who survived that conflict. Tattered Kimonos in Japan does just that: It is an intimate journey into contemporary Japan from the perspective of the generation of Japanese soldiers and civilians who survived World War II, by a writer whose American father and Japanese father-in-law fought on opposite sides of the conflict. The author, a former NPR senior editor, is Jewish, and he approaches the subject with the sensibilities of having grown up in a community of Holocaust survivors. Mindful of the power of victimhood, memory, and shared suffering, he travels across Japan, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, meeting a compelling group of men and women whose lives, even now, are defined by the trauma of war, and by lingering questions of responsibility and repentance for Japan's wartime aggression. The image of a tattered kimono from Hiroshima is the thread that drives the narrative arc of this emotional story about a writer's encounter with history, inside the Japan of his father's generation, on the other side of his father's war. This is a book about history with elements of family memoir. It offers a fresh and truly unique perspective for readers interested in World War II, Japan, or Judaica; readers seeking cross-cultural journeys; and readers intrigued by Japanese culture, particularly the kimono"-- Provided by publisher.

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