Dear Miye : Letters Home From Japan 1939-1946

The letters of Mary Kimoto Tomita tell the story of a young American woman of Japanese descent who, along with over ten thousand other Japanese Americans, was stranded in Japan during World War II.

Mary's letters to her two closest friends, Miye Yamasaki, her childhood friend in California, and Kay Oka, another young Japanese American stranded in Japan, chronicle Mary's turbulent life from her arrival in Japan in 1939 and her experiences as a civilian employee of US forces in the first years of the American occupation.

Mary's wartime letters and journal were destroyed in the Tokyo air raids, but shortly after she returned to the United States in January 1947, she wrote a memoir that reconstructed her wartime experiences.

Selections from this account are included here to cover the war years.

This is a fascinating account of a young woman defining herself against the demands of two competing cultures.