Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Personally, I don't even want to add a star up there in posting a review. Please don't buy this book, as it's a total misrepresentation of history. The protagonist in this book is a Japanese girl who lived in the northern part of Korea with her family in 1945. The book doesn't address anything about why her family lives in Korea in the first place and then retells the harrowing experience of her escape only after decades of adult life but does not fully describe the context of the setting. She conveniently skips the fact that her parents were imperialist occupants and that her father was a war criminal. Under the Japanese occupation, Koreans were faced with discrimination, persecution, inferior treatment, forced medical experiment, forced sex slavery, forced military draft to fight for Japan and resistance was met with execution and captivity. In fact, my maternal grandfather was jailed for participating in the resistance and died within 6 months of release due to physical punishment and deterioratIng health. This was when he was only 41 years of age. There is a justified reason as to why Koreans and Chinese still linger pain and agony from this period. There's a reference of bamboo trees in the cover illustration and the title, but honestly, there are not many bamboo trees in Korea, especially north because the ideal climate is in the southern region. There may be truth to her story of the ugly side of war but when the war was over, Korea wanted all the occupants out and no harm was done as they left. While the Nazi members and sympathizers were punished and the story of Jewish Holocaust retold to the world, the victims of horrendous killings and torture, rape and persecution by Koreans and China are not. To this day, many Japanese military ranks are still honored in their enshrined tombs even though they have been found guilty as war criminals. Would it be all right if the story was told from a girl of a Nazi family as the victim and Jews as the perpetrater? It's outrageous and only diminishes the atrocities Japanese have done in the past. This book is NOT appropriate for middle schoolers as it only confuses kids and promotes racial bias and hate toward Koreans.