Love Letter for a Japanese War Bride is Stephen E. Prices memoir of his eternal love for his first wife, Ryuko. Set primarily in postwar Japan, the story provides a window into a new worldone that spawned cultural diversity, but one that was largely unprepared for and unaccepting of it. The tale chronicles the lovers perseverance as they struggle with both the US and Japanese governments to gain permission to marry. The narrative is woven into fabrics of cultures, traditions, attitudes, language and historysome of which may be unfamiliar, but all of which is captivating. Above all, the unending and redemptive romance in this story captures the purest essence of love with all its twists and turns, joys and sorrows, highs and lows, and culminates in a tragic yet transcendent ending.
A remarkable memoir and love letter that rings true on every pageAn intimate and heartbreaking story, beautifully told. I can think of no other work about Japan and America that reveals more poignantly how love and trust can bridge race and culture, even where the odds seem so formidably against this.
John W. Dower,
Ford International Professor of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
Pulitzer Prize winning author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II.
