The story
By the time Imogene Pennington reaches Japan in November 1941, she knows her shipboard romance with Jimmy Yamashida has turned into love. An unlikely love to be sure, she the daughter of an American plantation owner in the Philippines, and he the son of Japan’s largest shipbuilder. Young and naïve, when they part in Yokohama, they vow to remain faithful, never suspecting their love will be tested almost beyond human endurance.
When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and then Manila, Imogene knows her romance is doomed. She and her family flee to the jungle but are soon captured and interned in the infamous Santo Tomás Prison Camp where she comes face to face with one of her captors: Jimmy Yamashida.
Can Imogene ever overcome her feelings of betrayal? Can her faith be restored in God …or in the man she loved?
The background
Early in April of 1942 the Americans surrendered to the Japanese on Bataan. About 12,000 Americans and 63,000 Filipinos became prisoners of war. What followed was one of the most brutal and devastating atrocities of modern history…The Bataan Death March. Other islands and nations in the Pacific and Southeast Asia continued to fall. Soon the Japanese controlled the Western Pacific…all but the Philippines. For the following four months General Douglas MacArthur’s United States Army Forces held out against the Imperial Japanese Army. Then the Philippines too fell.
The Inspiration
This novel takes place in the months leading up to, and the five years following the fall of the Philippine Islands and was inspired by my relatives who lived it: Aunt Alice Bryant in her memoire, The Sun Was Darkened, a chronicle of the years she and Uncle Will suffered through the invasion, the fall of Negros Island and their five years interned in Santo Tomás prison camp; and Sofia Adamson’s memoire, Gods, Angels, Pearls and Roses, which gave me insight into the city of Manila during those dark days. The characters in this book, though fiction, are drawn from real people. All locations and historical facts are authentic.