Choosing Life brings together generations and cultures:
[T]he voice a soldier of humble means and unique ambition who came to play a central role in the recording and documentation of Hiroshima, the musings and accounts of his pacifist daughter who opposed yet loved him a generation later, and last through the stories and glimpses of some of those who survived the nuclear bombings that concluded WWII. And in exploring these voices, this history points out the seams in the things many contemporary histories claim are monolithic: the idea “greatest generation” that fought and lived on without regrets and was universally honored thereafter for its sacrifices, the narrative of the “peace children” who could make no peace with their parents, whose pacifist ideas had no basis in realism, or who never came to understand or value what their parents had been through, and finally the image of Japan that went from implacable culturally uniform enemy to conformist military ally and economic rival. This book belongs in our archives as a companion to the records of nuclear conflict, the legacy of a (thus far successful) American and international peace movement, and a selection of first-person voices from a complex and dark part of our history. As a veteran who still struggles to balance the perspectives of my dogged yet sunny WWII veteran grandparents and a hard bitten and cynical Vietnam veteran stepfather, I prize this book as both a source of answers and questions.
Samuel Pickands, MAJ, USA (ret).
