This is a book recoding how people got back to Japan from Manshu（満州）when the World War II came to the end. The author called Tei Fujiwara heard the rumor that the war would end and prepaared for her mother country.
The path was beyond our imagination and how it went was described in detail in her book. While all people were desperate to get out of Manshu, all behaviors of every person was different. There were people who think of themselves first than anybody else, who buried her child to death, tried to decieve someone else to gain money. Despite the desperate situation, people were not gointg to help each other and were unsilling to believe in others. This was surprising, but when people are under escessive stress, it also seems convincing that people think of their own safety at first.
Especially, what was impressive was the story about Higashida san, who has a son named Tamio. She was always injuring her son and finally brought him to death due to malnutrition. This was an disappointing incident and all other people discriminated her after his death. However, she told that she was significantly struggled with loving him. How much she tried to love him, she was unabale to do so, neither does his son. His son also stared at her with hate. Arguablly she was not her own son, but regardless of what the relation was, she attempted to love, but couldn't. This was so sad and impressive that her strggling in the extreme situation stuck in my heart.
Ms. Tei Fujiwara was too tired and too distressd to be sane, but even in such a situation, she saved her 3 children and managed to bring them back to Japan.
One of them didn't want remember what was going on in the era. It was too vivid for him to maintain the memory and he tries to avoid touching the sensitive emotion.
I can't say that I can sympathyze with them and understand their feeling because their experience was so unique and not so easy to take on. However, it is significantly important to know what happend at that time, how people bahaved, how people survived and how our modern society was built based on their desperate effort. We need to and must know it even if you can do subtlely.
