The beauty in this book was the enlightenment it afforded me regarding the conditions in post WWII Japan.     If I'm honest (and I don't like to admit this) I wasn't even conscious of the fact that Japan had been occupied by the Americans for seven years after the war.    Hadn't realised that General MacArthur was in Japan working at introducing democracy to the country.     I'd never really stopped to consider how it might have been for the people of Japan.    For the Japanese Americans who had been forced from  their homes in America and sent to internment camps. Or those  Japanese Americans who had found themselves stranded in Japan during the war, requiring rations to stay alive and who consequently were no longer entitled to their American citizenship.

This was a gently told story bringing to life multiple pov and an eventual drawing together of the threads.   Aya, a 12 yo Japanese American who has come to Japan with her father but even here they don't quite belong.  Fumi, Aya's reluctant friend, who desperately misses Sumiko her older sister.    Sumiko, who unbeknown to Fumi, has gone off to work at the dance halls in Ginza, dancing with the GI's but who has now been disowned by her parents.   Kondo Sensei, the young girls' teacher, who moonlights at Love Letter Alley of a weekend translating letters from English to Japanese and vice versa.    So many Japanese women willing to spend their hard earned money to send love letters to the GI's who have returned home.    Of course there were also a large number of letters received by these same Japanese women, typically though these were of the <i>thanks for a good time but now it's over</i> type.    Finally, there was Matt (Matsumoto), a Japanese American who had enlisted during the war but was now based in Japan translating letters directed to General MacArthur from the Japanese people.  Initially I had expected the threads to be drawn more tightly into a cohesive story but soon came to realise that each character held my interest independently and it didn't really matter whether they did or not.   An enjoyable and enlightening story with a completely new (to me)  look at the after affects of war.

Thanks to Random House UK, Transworld Publishers and NetGalley.