Contemporary documents called for cooperation with the national policy of sending 1 million farming households to Manchuria and proposed establishing a 300-household Hamamatsu settlement there. That life changed abruptly six days before the war ended, when Soviet forces invaded Manchuria. When the family prepared to return to Japan, Takei was the one who dug up his father's remains. After returning to Japan, Takei and other surviving members of the pioneer group helped cultivate part of the Mikatahara Plateau, transforming what had once been wasteland. Eighty-one years after the war ended, the book is helping preserve memories of the brutality of war while carrying forward the survivors' hopes for peace.