"When Louise Steinman was growing up, her father never talked about his experiences in the Pacific during WWII. All she knew was that Asian food was banned from the house and that she was never to cry in front of him. Years later, she made a chance discovery.

Hidden among her late parent's belongings was an old ammunition box; inside were almost five hundred letters her father had written to her mother during the war and a silk Japanese flag inscribed in elegant calligraphy, "To Yoshio Shimizu given to him in the Greater East Asia War to be fought to the end. If you believe in it, you win." Who was Yoshio Shimizu, and why did her father have his flag?".

"The Souvenir is Steinman's quest to find out what happened to her father, the men he fought with, and the men he fought against. She crosses the world to the snow country of Japan to find the family of Yoshio Shimizu and return his flag. She visits the battlefield in the Philippines where her father and the men of his Twenty-fifth Infantry Division fought in a brutal campaign that set a record for consecutive days of combat.".

"From her conversations with veterans on both sides of the war, she comes to appreciate the life of a soldier and discovers, through her father's letters, the man she never knew - one who was brave, passionate, and scared. And, astonishingly, she develops a kinship with the surviving family of his enemy." "Weaving together her father's raw, poignant letters with her own journey, Steinman presents a view of how war changed one generation and shaped another."--BOOK JACKET.