Translations:Chapter One Trey/70/en

He did make it—graduating a second lieutenant—and was on a ship to the Philippines on August 15, 1945, when Japan surrendered. My dad spent most of his deployment as part of the first group of GIs in Tokyo. His letters are full of dizzying contrasts: the beauty of climbing Mount Fuji early one morning, and the shocking state of Tokyo after America’s firebombing—burned homes and buildings that were nothing more than concrete shells.