War and Cherry Blossoms

About the Book

A few months before the outbreak of the Second World War in the Pacific an American diplomat in Tokyo, Dan Winkler, whose achievements and ability turn him into an ideal agent for the Military Intelligence Service of the United States, is enlisted to its operations in Japan.  But soon the Japanese Secret Police and an extreme right-wing organization suspect and tail him and his beloved Elisabeth, daughter of a German diplomat in Tokyo.  After the start of the war Dan returns together with the American diplomats to the United States and to the State Department.  But the Military Intelligence Service takes him on again and he is given special training in Camp Ritchie and Fort Benning. Afterwards he participates in the campaigns in New Guinea and Saipan.  Disguised as a German naval officer – Winkler speaks German and Japanese – he parachutes into Japan in 1944 to detect the Japanese preparations for biological and chemical warfare.  He is assisted by Japanese, Korean, Jewish and German dissidents and radios under constant mortal danger valuable information to the American Intelligence Service.  He hides in the evacuation zone of the Germans; he is hunted by the Japanese Secret Police and extreme right-wingers and eventually taken prisoner.  He is interrogated and tortured but he doesn’t give away any secret information.  At the end of the war he is set free and general MacArthur decorates him for his merits.  But in the end he returns disillusioned to the United States because immunity is provided for the Japanese who conducted bacteriological experiments on allied prisoners.

About the Author

Dr. Fred de La Trobe, Journalist, was born 1928 in Baden-Baden, Germany. His father descended from a Huguenot and Baltic family and his mother from a family of Westphalia. With his parents he traveled in 1938 to Japan. His father was a diplomat at the German Embassy in Tokyo after journalistic activity in Stockholm, Geneva and Paris. After the end of the war Fred worked for one and a half years with the American occupation troops in Yokohama. In autumn of 1947 he was repatriated to Germany and finished high school in Bielefeld. He studied economy, mass communication and Japanese in Freiburg, Munich and West-Berlin. In 1959 he returned to Japan. He was East Asia correspondent for the newspapers ‘Die Welt’ and ‘Neue Züricher Zeitung’ and he wrote several non-fiction books about Japan. He is one of the few Germans who have lived in Japan over a period of fifty years before, during and after the war, and who has lived through all phases of the Far Eastern tragedy and revival at close quarters.