This story tells the tale of 3 young people separated by the events of World War II. The central character is 21 year old Emi Kato, the daughter of a Japanese diplomat living in America as the war begins.
Emi is an outspoken, well traveled and risk taking woman who forms a strong friendship with Leo Hartmann, a Jewish boy whilst they are both living in Vienna. Not long after the relationship begins, the Hartmann’s are forced to flee the Germans and find themselves living in the Japanese controlled ghettos of Shanghai. Emi and her family travel to America and as the war rages on, Emi is imprisoned in an internment camp in Texas.
Whilst in the camp Emi meets Christian Lange, a well to do teenager from Wisconsin whose German born parents had been arrested as being anti-American. In the internment camp the Japanese and Germans are housed separately but inevitably Emi and Christian fall in love only to be ultimately separated.
After Emi begins an arduous boat journey back to Japan, Christian enlists with the US Army. He finds himself in the bloody battle fields of the Pacific. At the same time Emi is living in a Japan that she does not recognise and living in conditions not much better than those in the internment camp.
Will Emi ever be reunited with Leo and Christian?
Tanabe’s novel is captivating as she describes how the 3 young people endure the horrors of war. They each narrate their own experiences. The author takes us on a journey of the world during WWII and introduces us to lesser known stories of the war, including the fact that 11,000 Germans were interned alongside the Japanese in America and the fact that Shanghai became an unlikely refuge for Jews escaping Europe. My only criticism is that the book is about 200 pages too long and the detail of some of the war’s events could have been shortened. Nonetheless an enjoyable novel.
