Lessons From Hiroshima

My grandfather was a kamikaze—a successful one. My Japanese mother never met her father so it was hard for her to miss him. Instead, some of her earliest memories were of American G.I.s handing out candy. They were big, blond and blue-eyed, strapping specimens of the U.S. occupation of Japan after its World War II defeat.

My mother would go on to marry an American, one who served in World War II on the Allied side. My father—neither big nor blond nor blue-eyed—had been a U.S.