I always find Veteran’s Day a cause for reflection. On the one hand, I believe there is value in honoring the sacrifices our veterans and their families have made. On the other hand, my husband and every other veteran I know has so much more to offer than their time in service. It seems unkind to reduce their lives to this one event and elevate it above all the rest.  And in the end, if Veteran’s Day becomes a romanticization of war, then we serve no one well–least of all veterans.

So I was pleased to find the non-fiction picture book THIRTY MINUTES OVER OREGON: A Japanese pilot’s World War II story in Annie Blooms this fall. It’s the story of a plan the Japanese had to drop bombs that would set fires to the coast of Oregon in the hopes of starting the sort of catastrophic forest fires we are seeing now in California. Fortunately the plan failed and like veterans all over the world, bomber pilot Nobuo Fujita, returned to his home and former life. But time passed and one Memorial Day many years later the townspeople of Brookings, Oregon asked Mr. Fujita to return to the place he had tried to bomb, this time as an honored guest in celebration of many years of peace between the Unites States and Japan. What flows from that is a tale of peace and reconciliation and deep healing that would make any veteran of any war proud. Thank you to Clarion and author Marc Tyler Nobleman and illustrator Melissa Iwai for a beautiful and thought-provoking book.