title: Bridge to the Sun
author: Terasaki, Gwen
description: Bridge to the Sun is a beautiful, tender, and moving love story-the true report of an international and interracial marriage of a Japanese diplomat and an American girl from the mountains of Tennessee. They were married in 1931, just as tension between their two countries was mounting, and their constant dream was of a “rainbow across the Pacific,” a bridge of peace between Japan and the United States. In the following ten years, Mr. Terasaki’s service with the Japanese Foreign Office took them to Japan, China (where their daughter Mariko was born), Cuba, and Washington, where they were living at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
  Mrs. Terasaki describes with rare perception and fine humor her months of internment with the Japanese diplomatic corps at Hot Springs and White Sulphur Springs, the long voyage back to Japan via Africa on the famed exchange ship Gripsholm, and the struggle of the war years in Japan which were marked with illness and near starvation. After the surrender, Mr. Terasaki, a courageous and brilliant man who had dedicated his life and health to avert the war, was appointed liaison between the Emperor and General MacArthur, and in this capacity, he played a vital part in the post-war relations between the two countries.