At 15, Akiyuki Nosaka (Grave of the Fireflies) was orphaned during the U.S. firebombing of Japanese cities late in World War II. He explored the aftermath of that event and the realities of mass starvation with brutal candor and poignancy in his children's stories, now included in this collection, in a new translation by Ginny Talley Takemori. The stories take place in the days leading up to Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945.
In "The Whale That Fell in Love with a Submarine," one of Nosaka's better-known pieces, a desperate whale that fails to find a suitable mate falls in love instead with a beached Japanese submarine attempting to evade Allied pursuers. In the book's eponymous story, "The Cake Tree in the Ruins," a child's memory of a sweet--the baumkuchen, a layered cake that resembles growth rings on a tree--becomes a source of hope for desperate survivors seeking relief from hunger. "The Mother That Turned into a Kite" offers images of bodies so emaciated by hunger that they float up to the heavens in the whirlwind rush of a bomb blast. A step-by-step instruction on building a home-based underground bunker in "My Home Bunker" becomes one child's final farewell to a father he will never again see.
These deeply intense and parable-like tales of suffering tear at the heartstrings, but also show hope and resiliency in a nation haunted by war. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant