"On June 20, 1945, just before the end of the war, 123 American bombers took off from the island of Guam for an attack on Shizuoka, a Japanese city at the foot of Mount Fuji. The raid destroyed two-thirds of the city, taking the lives of two thousand of its citizens. Twenty-three American airmen also died when two of their planes collided in mid-air.
That these twenty-three men were enemy soldiers mattered little to one Japanese person who buried their remains next to the graves of the Shizuoka citizens killed in the attack and erected a memorial for them there. Many years later, in 1971,...

The Letter(TM) by Jerry Yellin confronts that quality in a novel in which two men are destined for conflict from their first meeting at age 13, continuing as one accepts his personal vision of a peaceful and inclusive God to become a rabbi while the other pursues a life of political and personal conquest that seems at first to be impossible to reconcile with his Protestant Christian faith. Religion is a comfort, if not a beacon, for Yellin's rabbi, Mark Davidson; it is a tool rather than a philosophy for Adam Flowers, a shallow politician and American Talibaptist.

"As a WWII...

It has been said that the only warriors who do not suffer after combat are those who were killed. I cannot attest to that for all battle tested warriors but I certainly can for one---me. Some years ago a young, 13 year old eighth grade student from the Fairfield, Iowa Middle School once asked me, "Were you wounded in the war?
I had been invited to speak in Mrs. Broz's class for many years to talk about my wartime experiences. I had been asked and answered many questions but this one was different. I paused, thought deeply and quickly, and replied.
"Yes I was wounded,...