In March of 1945, Ms. Okabe was undergoing medical treatment at a facility in Osaka. After Tokyo and Nagoya were bombed, everyone had resigned themselves for an attack on Osaka. It was the night of the 13th that countless incendiary bombs came raining down from the sky hitting Osaka. Right after the attack, she walked down Midosuji Street, which had been reduced to ashes.

"There were burnt bodies every where. Some were covered with straw mats, but others were left out in the open and I couldn't bear to look at them. I've never forgotten the walk on that burnt field."

The raging flames completely burned and flattened her 3-storyhouse.

"The experience of war is terrible. There are no words that can describe it. It is destruction and then more destruction, hunger and then more hunger. No one should have to go through that ever again."

Every time she hears about indiscriminate terrorist attacks and bombings, she feels as if sparks of fire are coming down onto her head.

Ms. Okabe lost her brother in Singapore, and her fiance-, Mr. Kunio Kimura, in Okinawa. Before her fiance- went to the front, he clearly said to her that, "This war is wrong. I don't want to die for the Emperor. I would happily die for the country or for you."

Being a young girl in a militaristic country she was taught that it was her duty as "sekishi (children)" to sacrifice her life fighting for the Emperor. Ms. Okabe didn't understand what her fiance- meant.

"I would happily die for the Emperor if I were you," she said to him and saw him off waving the Japanese flag. A half a year after the defeat of the war, she was notified that her fiance- had died.

It was 1968, before the Okinawa Reversion, when Ms. Okabe visited Okinawa wanting to know about the last moment of her fiance- s life. She learned that after he was wounded in a bombardment from a warship he took his own life with a pistol. She finally found the place where her fiance- died. There, she could sense the remains of many who had not been recovered, grating against each other and screaming in the ground. Okinawa was sacrificed for the mainland and now 75% of the U.S. military bases in Japan have been thrust upon Okinawa. Ms. Okabe gained her viewpoint through her experiences, and in light of the facts regarding Okinawa, she started calling herself a "woman who is responsible."

"Kunio had a strong sense of self. He was an honest, heroic man. He was a good young man. Today I still regret that when I last saw him I didn't tell him to run away with me or to kill ourselves together? I want to know the truth about the person I loved. Without knowing the truth, you don't truly love that person. I couldn't do it. It was when I visited to Okinawa that I learned this."

Ms. Okabe's essays express a firm, grave attitude about facing the truth and bringing light into one's life. She says that she is very grateful that her essays have a large international readership but is equally thoughtful about sorrow in the world and the people who are constantly at war.

"I have been consistently saying in my books 'I don't like war,' and 'discrimination is bad.' People from the U.S. and Sweden visit me because they want to send my message throughout the world. All I want to say is that humans need to remain humans. As humans, we want to live in the world filled with joy and love for ourselves, others, and the weak. Despite the differences in languages and nationalities, we are all human. We have to love and respect each others in order to find joy."