Examines Japan’s war generation—Japanese men and women who survived World War Two and rebuilt their lives, into the 21st century, from memories of that conflict
 
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.
 

Robert Rand has worked in journalism for more than three decades. He was senior editor of the weekend edition of NPR’s All Things Considered and has produced and reported stories and documentaries that have aired on NPR’s newsmagazines as well as other public radio platforms. Rand is also author of four other books, among them Tamerlane’s Children: Dispatches from Contemporary Uzbekistan; Comrade Lawyer: Inside Soviet Justice in an Era of Reform; and My Suburban Shtetl: A Novel About Life in a 20th Century Jewish-American Village.
 

"Japan’s record of war crimes and its own wartime trauma have long been overshadowed by the horrors of Nazi Germany. As the son of a Jewish World War Two veteran who witnessed the liberation of Buchenwald and the son-in-law of a Japanese soldier who served in his nation’s Imperial Army, Robert Rand was uniquely driven to explore how the Japanese people made sense of what their country had done in the war and how it had itself suffered as a result. This book is the product of his conversations over many years with dozens of Japanese who shared with him their wartime memories and their stories of growing up in a deeply scarred country. At once chilling and inspiring, Tattered Kimonos in Japan helps fill a gap in our understanding of the legacy of a war that changed the world."
—Tom Gjelten, author of A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story

“The writing in Tattered Kimonos is graceful, never precious, forced, or labored. In presenting these stories, observations, insights, and acts, Robert Rand brings about the remembering of a war that, in turn, makes that war real.”
—Donald Anderson, author of Quagmire: Personal Stories from Iraq

"Robert Rand has woven a poignant story introducing unsung victims of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and managed to leave the politics and judgmentalism out. . .We are now 78 years past the end of that war, and it's a good time to change the focus. Rand's beautifully written new book provides that opportunity, reminding us that before and after, so many victims were ordinary people living normal lives."
—Yoshihisa Komori is a veteran Japanese journalist and Washington correspondent. As a journalist, he also covered wars, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Angola, and Afghanistan.
 — -