AustLit

'Japan in 1945, was a proud nation humiliated by defeat, its cities in ruins, many of its people starving, ragged and living in unbelievable chaos and squalor.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been wiped out by atom bombs, the mysterious 'pikadon' as the Japanese called them, which went on killing for weeks and months after the explosions.

To this devastated country came soldiers of the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces (BCOF). The big contingent of Australians in BCOF had bitter memories of Japanese torture and maltreatment of Australian prisoners of war on the infamous Burma railway, and on forced 'death' marches from which few returned.

A strict ban was imposed on fraternisation with the conquered enemy. Yet from the ruins of devastated Kure flowered a strange and wonderful love story: the love of a little Japanese girl - orphaned at Hiroshima - and a young Australian soldier.

Nobuko Sakuramoto was one of the Japanese housemaids working at BCOF encampments in the bleak and bomb-scarred dock city. Gordon Parker, too young to have experienced actual fighting, had joined the Occupation Force for adventure. He figured, instead, in a human drama which paralleled the love story of Romeo and Juliet.

Love was stronger than official bans, and the author describes how Parker defied them to marry the girl he loved, though separated from him by race, customs, and prejudice. The entry of Japanese wives into Australia was not permitted, and Parker spent years and all his savings battering upon official doors to bring his young wife and children home to him in Australia.

At last the immigration wall was breached and permission granted to bring Nobuko 'Cherry' Parker to Australia - the first Japanese bride to be allowed entry into Australia after the Pacific war.' (Publisher's blurb)