"In this gripping new memoir, Kazuko Blake tells the story of her early life, before, during, and after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Her vivid recollection of experiencing the blast alone in her sixth-grade classroom makes readers feel like we are right there with her, squeezed under a desk, with thumbs in our ears, three fingers over our eyes, pinkies holding our nose, and breathing through our mouth, just as her teachers had trained her to do. Blake spent most of her adult life in the United States, raising kids in Texas. Questions about her past from grandchildren and others, and a fateful 2019 visit to Hiroshima, her first visit to Japan since leaving in 1957, prompted her to record her history. This story, from the perspective of someone external to the better-known narratives of twentieth-century history in Japan, provides a fresh take on the critical events of 1945 and the decades before and after the war."

Lori Watt, Associate Professor of History and Global Studies, Washington University in St. Louis. Author of When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan. (Harvard University Press, 2009)