From: http://www.nanamizushima.com/reviews-2/ Reviews including those from: Goodreads.com, Shelf Media Group , Japan Times and Amazon.com Tei - Notable Book Honor Tei – Notable Book Honor Below are a selection of reviews: Japan Times Book Review JapanTimes “Fujiwara here recounts a terrifying journey home from Manchuria with three young children in the final chaotic days of World War II. The family was in Manchuria as part of the Japanese colonial occupation there. The trip took several months during which they suffered cold and snow, often on foot and shoeless, shortages of food, clothing and housing, various illnesses, and encounters with unsympathetic bureaucrats before they made it home. Her oldest child was five and the youngest an infant she had to carry on her back. When milk ran out she feared fro the life of her listless infant. One of the worst privations they faced was the lack of water, when their mouths were so dry they could barely speak. A concern that was subsumed under the start struggle for survival was the fact that her five-year-old was missing school. The odyssey called on all the courage and determination Tei could summon to avoid advancing Soviet forces. Fearing that she would not survive the ordeal, on her return she wrote her memoir as a testament for her children. Her story has resonances with our daily media accounts of the displacement, wounding, killing, and rape of women and children in violence around the world. She was more fortunate than many, arriving home with herself and her three children basically intact and able to reunite with husband and father. Nana Mizushima has chosen the daunting challenge of translating this book from Japanese, the world’s most complex writing system, with grammar to match. She had the advantage of being raised by Japanese-speaking parents, not to diminish the literary and cultural sensitivity with which she accomplished this feat, with the aid of her mother. Readers might wish that place names in Korea and Manchuria were not rendered in Japanese, though a glossary is provided. Mizushima is to be commended for providing Western readers with this chilling account of some wrenching human aspects of the end of World War II. The book became an almost instant best-seller in Japan, running to forty-six printings and appearing in movie and television versions.” Professor Emeritus Joyce Lebra. (born December 21, 1925), also known as Joyce Chapman Lebra, is an American historian of Japan and India. Lebra spent her childhood in Honolulu and received her B.A. and M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Minnesota. She received a Ph.D. in Japanese History from Harvard/Radcliffe, and was the first woman Ph.D. in Japanese History in the U.S.

From: http://www.nanamizushima.com/reviews-2/ Reviews including those from: Goodreads.com, Shelf Media Group , Japan Times and Amazon.com Tei - Notable Book Honor Tei – Notable Book Honor Below are a selection of reviews: Japan Times Book Review JapanTimes “Fujiwara here recounts a terrifying journey home from Manchuria with three young children in the final chaotic days of World War II. The family was in Manchuria as part of the Japanese colonial occupation there. The trip took several months during which they suffered cold and snow, often on foot and shoeless, shortages of food, clothing and housing, various illnesses, and encounters with unsympathetic bureaucrats before they made it home. Her oldest child was five and the youngest an infant she had to carry on her back. When milk ran out she feared fro the life of her listless infant. One of the worst privations they faced was the lack of water, when their mouths were so dry they could barely speak. A concern that was subsumed under the start struggle for survival was the fact that her five-year-old was missing school. The odyssey called on all the courage and determination Tei could summon to avoid advancing Soviet forces. Fearing that she would not survive the ordeal, on her return she wrote her memoir as a testament for her children. Her story has resonances with our daily media accounts of the displacement, wounding, killing, and rape of women and children in violence around the world. She was more fortunate than many, arriving home with herself and her three children basically intact and able to reunite with husband and father. Nana Mizushima has chosen the daunting challenge of translating this book from Japanese, the world’s most complex writing system, with grammar to match. She had the advantage of being raised by Japanese-speaking parents, not to diminish the literary and cultural sensitivity with which she accomplished this feat, with the aid of her mother. Readers might wish that place names in Korea and Manchuria were not rendered in Japanese, though a glossary is provided. Mizushima is to be commended for providing Western readers with this chilling account of some wrenching human aspects of the end of World War II. The book became an almost instant best-seller in Japan, running to forty-six printings and appearing in movie and television versions.” Professor Emeritus Joyce Lebra. (born December 21, 1925), also known as Joyce Chapman Lebra, is an American historian of Japan and India. Lebra spent her childhood in Honolulu and received her B.A. and M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Minnesota. She received a Ph.D. in Japanese History from Harvard/Radcliffe, and was the first woman Ph.D. in Japanese History in the U.S.