Tattered Kimonos in Japan

"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.