Masako Robbins' intimate personal account of her life in pre-war, wartime, and early postwar Okinawa compels the reader to experience the history of this tumultuous era from the perspective of the daughter in an impoverished family. Sold as a child by her father to a brothel in the 1930s, and drafted by the Japanese military as a combat nurse during the Battle of Okinawa, she barely survived after being trapped in a cave collapsed by shelling. Placed in a refugee camp at the end of the battle, her family later returned to their village to find their home destroyed. Her strength, resourcefulness, and resilience throughout these horrifying ordeals are nothing short of astounding. Now eighty-six years old and living in Yuma, Arizona, Masako learned enough English after coming with her first husband to the United States in 1952 to write this memoir in English. In 1964 she met Warren and Mieko Rucker who, together with Karen King, edited the text, a portion of which is presented below.