Michiko Yoshikawa Johnson

I was born in Osaka, Japan in 1941, the same year that the country attacked Pearl Harbor. I grew up in postwar Japan wondering why my country had not only lost the war but become the world's first victim of the atomic bomb. In high school and college, I struggled to make sense of facts that made no sense at all. Reading was the only thing that helped me reach the depth of the human condition while facing the atrocities committed by my own country's soldiers. Eventually I felt that I was born to tell this story to reveal the other side of Japan unknown to the Western world. I started writing The Red Paper in 1995 after having lived in Hawaii, Hong Kong and Singapore, where half a century before people had suffered Japan's aggressions. I now live in Central Iowa. I wish for peace to prevail in the world so my two daughters and two grandchildren may live and thrive.