I have read your book recently. My father was on the Stlo CVE63VC65. In the book you describe the ship’s sinking by Kamikze Pilot Yukio seki. I have met several of the people you mention, Including Holy Crawforth & Joe Downs. at my fathers reunions held in October of each year. My father passed away two years ago. In 2007 before he passed away, he got to do something really timely and left behind a recorded legacy for me and my family. He participated in an interview sponsored by the Library of Congress and called the Veteran’s History Project. In the interview he got to describe what happened to his ship, but there is more. I’m sure you have heard the adage “it’s a small world. It turns out the man who interviewed him, named Ted Gardner, had been in the same battle and stationed on the Kalinin Bay the ship next to him. Mr Gardener witnessed the sinking of the St Lo. They had been living 10 miles apart in cincinnati for 50 years and did not know that each other existed. Mr Gardner is originally from Oregonand moved here for his job about 50 years ago. If you are interested in viewing my father’s interview, search for the Public Library of cincinnati on the internet and look for the Veteran’s History Project. When you find it, search by his last name, Bramel. You way also want to search by Gardner & Bright. Mr Gardner was interviewed 6 months before my father. He gave a vivid account of the battle they were in & recounted some of his later experiences later in the war including Meeting Winston Churchill at the first UN Conference in San Francisco in 1945. Lucille (Marion) Bright is my aunt. She served in the USO and saw Japan & Korea shortly after the war. She passed through Hiroshima on a train and remembers seeing the devastation. I hope this message reaches you. Mike B.

I’ll begin by thanking you. I have just completed your truly fine book ‘Blossoms In The Wind’ and found it, among other experiences, engaging, uplifting, saddening, exciting, and above all extremely educational. With regard to the latter I felt that I had just read something (Japan-related or not) that provided a real sense of what humans go through in their struggles with conflict and nationalism, etc. in times of desperation. It is so much more than people could (including myself) ever envisage having to experience/endure. And I am not an expert by any means on this or other similar topics. You have opened a world to me.

I am, for want of a better description, simply a person very interested in all things Japanese and this read provided me with insights into important historical and cultural events and modern social issues that I was previously unaware of (ignorant in fact). I cannot thank you enough for your efforts in making this book available to the masses. I am now telling/giving it to others to read as it offers so much that I think is difficult to understand, especially living in a disconnected modern society as I do. There are always lessons to be learned.

I am a rambler by nature (I love to talk!) and although somewhat off-topic, I wanted to mention (as a means to introduce myself to you – sorry to bore you!) that I have always had a fascination with the Japanese language and culture. This was kindled when I was 6 years old and would you believe the source for my inspiration came from a song written by Queen called ‘Teo Torriate’. My dad was a fan and from first hearing it I was amazed at how people could read and write in a manner so ‘alien’ from English – I was very young. I was and still am particularly fond of the written language as a form of art, i.e. calligraphy. Anyway life got in the way for a couple of decades and I never had the opportunity to really follow that first inspiration. But now it would seem events are conspiring in my favour and 1. I have just made a first trip to Japan with my family (on our way to NY where my wife hails from and I spent some years), 2. by chance I now work alongside a ‘real’ Japanese person who has become a great friend and provided immense support and encouragement, and 3. I am finally making the effort to ‘learn’ the language. Events have nudged me in the direction I always wanted to go!

But I digress. So thank you for your book. It has provided me with an insight into an important historical chapter I had little to no background in (other than the usual documentaries you mentioned above). I have no military experience (a great grandfather fought in WWII but I never met him – all I see is a plaque on the wall) and my own generation (I am 40) has also lived without poverty and in a seemingly blissful state for the past half century – I tend to think we are becoming dumbed-down or at least desensitised from such events. The saddest thing seems to be that we are, as you wrote about, forgetting the details and thus we are losing the connections to the human stories and hence we have little to no understanding of why these events happened.

I am sorry but I tried to resist writing superfluous words about my own life, but I gave in (on purpose) because you have significantly added to my awareness and appreciation of the dramatic yet sad human experiences of that time. I wanted to at least communicate that. I know now that your book and what I understand and got from it should be communicated to as wide an audience as possible. I also thank you for making this interactivity available and that you do not mind my rambling.

Kindest regards,
Grant Dickins

First, my apologies for my use of the familiar, but after reading “Blossoms…” I now feel I know you as well as your marvellous interview subjects; kudos for a great, great work that fills a much over-looked gap in the genre. I’m a military historian of sorts, and as a former Marine, trend towards events in the Pacific theatre. I’ve read so much of what my compatriots experienced on the ground relative to Japanese duty and patriotism that your expansive research into the airborne component of this uniquely Japanese idea of duty has provided the most rounded of understandings yet, in my mind, of nature of combat, myth, and racial misinterpretations of this tragic, yet fascinating chapter in the history of our two nations.

I was somewhat disappointed that, while you alluded to the efforts to “correct” history by some of your subjects, that you didn’t develop this theme more in your excellent epilogue. Given all the who-ha about Yasukuni, radical-rightist speaker trucks, and blatantly erroneous revisionism, I wanted to hear what you thought of these trends. As a fellow doctoral student, I’ve many, many more questions and comments I’d love to develop off-list if possible, and would like to start a dialog with you regarding this and other J-centric topics (Biz, culture and media…). I’m planning a long-overdue trip to Japan (I was on Okinawa during my service time) and would like to take advantage of your services as well as your obvious talents in a mutual area of interest…
Warm regards, Bucky-san
Jeff