BELLEVILLE - Belleville Books, southern Illinois's newest independent bookstore, is pleased to announce today its 2024 Book of the Year, Kazuko: Sixth Grade in World War II Hiroshima, A Memoir, written by O'Fallon, Illinois resident Kazuko Blake with Sandra Vega.
Kazuko is the memoir of a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor. It is the story of a young Japanese girl's experience living through the world's first atomic bomb and its aftermath.
Kazuko Blake, now in her 90s, is one of few remaining survivors of that event. The atomic bomb was dropped while she was in 6th grade, and she remembers the events clearly. Here she describes the relatively carefree days before the war, the increased tempo of war through her elementary school days, and August 6, 1945, the day the bomb fell. The chaos and disruption are palpable as she describes the following days of uncertainty and confusion during evacuation, surrender, and occupation of her home country. In time, she met some of those victors, and she concludes her story with impressions of them and her eventual move to the country of her former enemy. It was a time of great change for Japan, and she shares her observations of it in this engaging memoir.
The book is published by Wide Angle Press LLC of O'Fallon, Illinois and is available in both hardcover (ISBN 9798990803206, $26 and paperback (ISBN 9798990803213, $17) at Belleville Books and bellevillebooks.com.
"We are proud to share Kazuko's book as our Book of the Year for 2024," said Belleville Books co-owner, Robert Eckman, "we look forward to the new year and discovering more great stories."
Founded in 2024, Belleville Books is an independent bookstore located at 20 East Main in Belleville, Illinois, in the historic 1912 Belleville Savings Bank building.
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