This is the powerful story of Australia’s first Japanese war-bride at a time when Australia’s war scars refused to bend…
Based on a true family story, Alli Parker has fictionalised the love and dedication of her grandparents in her debut novel.
Nobuko Sakuramoto AKA Cherry was sixteen years old when the atomic bomb obliterated Hiroshima and her family. Despite her remarkable survival, Cherry lived with deep trauma and panicked state to find a way to live in post-war danger. Not only vulnerable as a woman amongst her own people, but also on the new port base in Kure where the Australian military contingent was housed. Provision of work on the base helped her plight but the cultural divide and differences was a tension that never left her but hope and love was found when she met Gordon AKA Don-san.
Gordon Parker was eighteen years old when his parents finally agreed to sign his papers to enlist in the Australian Army to serve in World War Two. The surrender of Japan in 1945 meant that he was able to utilise his medic training and was shipped to the port base in Kure, to help in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima.
Take away the divides and the brutality of war and you are left with the frail humanity that must re-group and alter their existence in a changed world. The utter devastation in Hiroshima on 6th August 1945, reminds us that in amongst the horrific destruction, there were innocent people bewildered, maimed, devastated, traumatised and left to live in the dark shadows of a new weapon unleashed.
Australia was not ready to accept Japanese war-brides and their love would have to overcome the insurmountable obstacles of the white Australia policy and post-war bureaucracies.
Gordon and Cherry had to trust those in power to determine their fate, have faith that a system would change and resolve to believe the best outcome could be possible.
This is a truly remarkable story of dedicated lobbying, perseverance and patience – relentless pressure and an unknown future. Real lives and the human faces impacted by the cost of war.
Tears sprung to my eyes in the obvious places, but so too as I read of the smallest acts of kindnesses in the midst of survival and the unknown.
Harper Collins
ISBN 9781460763520