In this family saga, a present-day marriage proposal will fail unless dark secrets at the hearts of the lives of four brothers turned soldiers in WW2 are unlocked.
In the opening scene, which is set in Burma in 1943, Lieutenant Peter Dillon leads a Fighting Patrol carrying a vital message from his commanding officer to Brigade Headquarters three miles away. While en route, they run into a Japanese patrol preparing to ambush them. In the fighting that follows, Peter is mortally wounded and orders his men to leave him in the jungle. The survivors of the Japanese patrol find him. After a brief discussion, Peter is executed by the Japanese officer. The officer confiscates Peter’s watch, which was removed from his body by one of the Japanese soldiers.
In 1989, JAMES DILLON and MASAKO TAKEHASHI meet in the National Gallery and started dating. Eventually, they move into a flat in Fulham and decide to get married. The news of their engagement is a shock to SARAH DILLON, James’s mother, as she has never forgiven the Japanese for their treatment of British Prisoners of War. During the Second World War, the Japanese killed her childhood sweetheart and James’s uncle, who were fighting for the British in Burma. As a result, James’s mother has loathed the Japanese ever since. She threatens to disown James if he marries Masako. He is torn between his loyalty to his widowed mother and his love for Masako.
While looking through his grandfather’s photograph album, James and Masako discover a picture showing their grandfathers met in Japan at the turn of the 20th century. They decide to research their family histories to find out how the two men encountered each other.
After completing research on his grandfather, James shares the story of Edward’s life with Masako. Born in Ireland in 1878, EDWARD DILLON trained to be a doctor and was then commissioned into the British Army. His first posting was in Hong Kong and then Tienstin, China, where he met a retired British colonel who convinced him to visit Japan. After two years in Hong Kong and China, Edward took a steamship to Japan for a three-month visit. The year was 1907. Two months into his visit, he stayed in a ryokan near Kyoto owned by KANOU TAKAHASHI, Masako’s grandfather. The two men became friends and agreed to correspond with each other.
Edward returned to Hong Kong, and two years later, he travelled to Ireland to study dermatology at Trinity College Medical School. He rented a room in a spacious townhouse in Dublin owned by a pharmacist who lived with his wife and a young daughter. The pharmacist also had two teenage stepdaughters. When the younger stepdaughter left to live with relatives in America, her older sister, MARY RYAN, was distraught. Concerned, Edward asked the pharmacist’s wife to explain Mary’s distress.
Mary, she explained, had had a tough life. Born in New York, she was one of three children. Their parents had emigrated from Ireland and were trying to make a life for themselves in the New World. They moved to Rhode Island, where her father, MICHAEL RYAN, had found work. When she was nine, Michael Ryan told his wife he had to go back to Ireland to attend his father’s funeral. In fact, he was leaving with his girlfriend and was never seen again. Mary’s mother could not support her three children on her own, so she sailed back to Ireland to live on her father’s farm. When she and her only son died of meningitis a year later, Mary and her sister were adopted by their aunt, who lived in Dublin.
Edward became friends with Mary, and they were engaged to marry when she was twenty-one. Edward’s father was concerned about their engagement’s impact on his family’s reputation, so a wedding in Ireland was out of the question. When Edward was posted to India, they decided to get married there instead.
Mary was just twenty-three when she travelled on her own by a steamer to Bombay, where she and Edward were married. Their first son, John, was born nine months later in Poona in July 1916. Edward’s father died soon after.
In 1917, Edward was deployed to a campaign in Mesopotamia, requiring him to leave his family behind. Mary and John left India and sailed to Ireland to stay with Edward’s now-widowed mother in the family home.
Due to the combination of the U-boat threat to passenger liners and the Spanish Flu epidemic after the end of the First World War, Mary and Edward were not reunited until 1919, when Mary and her son were finally able to sail back to India. Their youngest son, Peter, was born three years later.
Masako returns to Japan to visit her mother and start planning their wedding. Her mother gives her a wristwatch that had belonged to her father and a bundle of letters from Edward Dillon to her grandfather discovered during the refurbishment of the ryokan. With her mother’s help, she learns about her grandfather’s life.
Back in London, Masako tells James about her grandfather, KANOU TAKAHASHI. He was born in 1878 in the family’s Ryokan in Yunohanazawa. When his father died, he inherited the Ryokan, which he continued to run in the traditional style. As Japan opened up, he started to see more foreign guests, one of whom was Edward Dillon. They became friends and shared a common interest in botany.
On the way back from a rare visit to Kyoto, he met HARA SATO. In due course, they married and had two children, both boys. When Edward writes to tell him about his marriage to Mary, he is delighted. In turn, Kanou wrote back to Edward with news of his wedding.
Kanou and Hara’s boys grew up at a time when Japan was developing into a significant military power with an ambition to rule the world. Their oldest son, KAZOU TAKAHASHI, was academic and admitted to medical school in Kyoto. His younger brother, TAKESHI TAKAHASHI, was less academic but a great sportsman and emotionally volatile. His fits of anger were a problem for his parents.
The friendship between Edward and Kanou ends when Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. Shortly afterwards, Hara died of cancer, and both sons enlisted in the Japanese army. Kanou was distraught and alone.
As the war progressed, the boys wrote to their father, describing their officer training and preparations for their first overseas deployment. After landing in Cambodia, their Division moved into Thailand, which was used as a base for a major operation designed to push the British out of Burma. Kanou read the accounts of Japan’s many victories with mixed feelings. He worried that Japan had underestimated the ability of their enemies to fight back.
Masako finishes her account at this point, telling James there is more to follow. She is keen to hear what James’s father did during the Second World War, knowing that he had been fighting against the Japanese.
With some help from his mother and regimental war diaries in the Public Records Office in Kew, James pulls together an account of his father’s wartime experiences. DAVID HARVEY, one of his father’s old comrades, also assists him. David had met John at his father’s funeral and was saddened to learn how little James knew about his father’s army career.
When James is ready, he starts to share his findings with Masako.
When the Second World War started, John Dillon enlisted and was commissioned into the Royal Berkshire Regiment. His initial training was in Northern Ireland, where it was cold and wet. At that time, the British decided they needed to reinforce India against a potential threat from Japan. Volunteers willing to be transferred to the Indian army were sought. John volunteered and was accepted because of his Indian experiences as a child. Peter’s application was rejected. He journeyed to Bombay and was assigned to the Royal Garhwal Rifles, stationed in Landi Kotal, the garrison town for the Khyber Pass. After a year, John’s proficiency in Urdu had returned, leading to his transfer to the Intelligence Corps. After specialised training in the Intelligence Corps Depot in Karachi, during which he is told of his brother’s death in Burma, John is given the command of a Field Security Section (FSS) and selected for special duties. They were to be attached to a commando brigade.
Masako listened to James’s account with interest and asked why Peter had not been initially accepted for a transfer to India. James explains that when the family left India, he was too young to learn any useful Urdu, so his application was turned down.
A month passes, and James is ready to tell Masako about his Uncle Peter’s wartime experiences.
As soon as he was old enough, Peter enlisted in the army and was commissioned into the 1st Batallion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment. He joined them in 1942 as they were preparing to deploy overseas. Only when they were at sea did he learn that their destination was India. On arrival, they acclimatised and then started jungle warfare training.
In December 1942, the Battalion was transported by train across India to Chittagong. They were to take part in what would be known as the First Arakan Campaign. The Battalion entered Burma and set up a Command Post on a hill overlooking Japanese positions. Peter’s Fighting Patrol was sent to take an urgent message to Brigade Headquarters on the coast. En route, they encountered a Japanese ambush, and Peter was mortally wounded. He ordered his men to leave him. His body was never recovered. The Japanese had once again encircled the British, who retreated over the border to India in disarray.
At this point, James stops talking. Masako’s reaction to hearing about Peter’s death is muted. Then she reveals that she has just discovered both her father and uncle had served with the Japanese army in Burma and that her uncle had been killed in fighting against the British. James is dumbfounded and wonders how his mother would react to this news. Masako tells James she is going to meet one of her father’s old comrades, who will tell her more about her father’s time in the army when she next goes back to Japan.
A few days later, James resumes his account of his father’s experiences in India and Burma.
He and his FSS spent the next year training for jungle warfare and combined operations. The British commanders had learned lessons from their earlier failures and devised new tactics designed to turn encirclement, a Japanese tactical strength, into a fatal weakness.
When the commando brigade arrived in India, John’s FSS joined them. Not long afterwards, they embarked on a ship bound for active service. While at sea, John opened their secret orders and learned they were to take part in an operation against a Japanese-held island on the northern Burma coast. The commandos shaved their heads in the Mohican style, much to the amusement of John’s men.
In the end, this operation was cancelled, and John’s FSS was attached to IV Corps HQ. They set up a base in Teknaf on the Burma border, just 30 miles from where his brother was killed. They had been tasked with monitoring the Japanese forces on the other side of the border. With the help of double agents in Burma, John learned more about his brother’s death. His informants told him that his brother had been severely wounded in an ambush and then probably executed by a Japanese officer.
Masako is horrified by this revelation. James then tells her more about his father’s time in Burma.
John’s s FSS is eventually moved north and joins up with other sections to create a security screen east of Cachar district and in the hills of the western Manipur state to prevent Japanese Inspired Fifth Columnists (JIFCs) and other undesirables from filtering into India. In November 1944, John was transferred again and took command of a FSS attached to the Special Force. A month later, he was diagnosed with jaundice and hospitalised. While he was recovering, Special Force was disbanded. Once again, John was transferred, this time to Imphal.
At this point, Masalko asks James to stop as she needs to sleep.
A week later, David Harvey comes to London for a conference and invites James to dinner. James accepts and asks if he can bring his fiancée. David is surprised to find that James’s fiancée is Japanese and reacts when she tells him her name. Over dinner, David tells them how John’s father arranged for him to join him in Imphal. David arrived in Imphal after travelling from Chittagong to discover his new FSS was about to head into Burma. It was March 1945.
The previously unbeatable Japanese army was in retreat but still fighting hard. After a nine-day drive through monsoon rains, the Section’s convoy arrived in Meiktila, only to be told they had been re-tasked and were needed elsewhere. After three more days on the road, they arrived in Toungoo, where they set up a security screen to stop remnants of the 28th Japanese army from escaping to Thailand. With the help of local tribesmen and women, ex-Burma Rifles troops, and twelve elephants, their security screen was nearly seventy miles from end to end. In the months before the end of the Second World War, they captured many escaping Japanese soldiers. They also killed Japanese troops who did not want to surrender.
David ends his briefing with a surprise.
He revealed that after the war ended, John Dillon was assigned to a new FSS and tasked with another special operation. Once again, he arranged for David to be transferred to his new FSS. David did not have time to discuss what had happened after that, so he invited James to his home for a final briefing.
Knowing James’s father had been involved in fighting against the Japanese is hard for Masaako. Her concerns are compounded when James tells her his father paid bounty payments to Burmese tribesmen who killed Japanese soldiers. Masako discovers her father’s watch had once been owned by Edward Dillon, which confirms her father had killed Peter Dillon.
A miracle is needed to save their wedding plans, as Masako’s family would pressure her not to marry James if they knew.
Hoping that she can withhold sharing her knowledge about James’s father from her family, Masako flies back to Japan to talk to her mother and plan their wedding. She also visits KOGORŌ SAITŌ, one of her father’s old comrades. Just before he killed himself, her father had asked Kogorō to promise to tell his family about his wartime experiences, both good and bad. Maskao’s mother does not want to hear what he has to say, so Masako volunteers to see him.
Kagorō explained that he and Takeshi had been officers in the same regiment and had spent much of the war together. He described their officer training and their part in the invasion of Burma. For the first two years, they knew nothing but success. They encircled British positions manned by inexperienced troops, cut their supply routes and time after time, the British fled in disarray, leaving behind supply dumps full of bully beef and tinned fruit.
In 1944, all that changed. When they encircled British and Indian troops in the Arakan, they were caught in a trap of their own making. Their enemy did not withdraw. Instead, they created fortified positions, which were supplied by air. The Japanese troops had set out with food and ammunition for ten days. After that, they could not fight and started to die of starvation. Out of the 2150 men in their regiment, only 400 remained alive when the Japanese eventually withdrew.
This battle marked the beginning of the end for the Japanese forces in Burma. During the fighting, an artillery barrage killed Kazuo Takahashi, who was working as a doctor in a field hospital. In a rage, Takeshi Takahashi took part in the massacre of British doctors and patients in a casualty clearing station. Shortly afterwards, he was wounded and evacuated to Cambodia. He was lucky because many wounded Japanese soldiers could not be evacuated and, instead, were given fatal injections by their medics.
Masako then is astonished to learn that, in the months following the end of the war, her father fought against the Vietminh in Saigon under the command of British officers.
James contacts David Harvey and asks if he could visit to hear about what he and his father did in Saigon after the end of the Second World War.
David tells James how they flew to Saigon as part of Operation Masterdon. Their objectives were to keep the peace, manage the surrender of 70,000 Japanese in Indochina and hand Indochina back to the French. At the same time, the Vietminh declared independence and tried to stop the handover of power back to the French. As most of the British/Indian troops assigned to Masterdon were still at sea, General Gracey decided to rearm Japanese troops and placed them under the command of British officers. John Dillon arranged for Takeshi Takahashi, who he suspected of being his brother’s killer, to be assigned to his Section. The two men got to know each other, and when Takeshi prevented an attempt to assassinate him, John Dillon decided not to pursue his investigation into his brother’s death. He had seen that Takeshi was no longer the man who killed Peter. The war had changed him. Takeshi had told John that he had disgraced himself by his actions in Burma and that the shame he felt would stay with him for the rest of his life. John had seen that not all Japanese officers regretted their actions during the war.
James is stunned by David’s account.
George Bailey, an old family friend and her local vicar, talks to Sarah and James Dillon to try to help them resolve their differences. He succeeds in getting Sarah to agree to fly to Japan to attend their wedding. James invites David Harvey to his wedding and is a little surprised when he accepts.
On arrival, Sarah Dillon meets Masako’s mother, YOKO TAKAHASHI, before the wedding, and they get to know each other. They are then taken to a restaurant by James and Masako, who then tell them what they have discovered about their fathers’ and uncles’ exploits in the war. Sarah is initially shocked by what she hears but then begins to understand why her husband did not hate the Japanese after the war. Fighting alongside each other in Saigon, John and Takeshi had grown to respect each other. They also understood that the reality of the fighting in Burma had made them do things that were outside the norms of civilised society.
Masako finally understood why her father had killed himself when she was nine.
James and Masako marry in Kyoto, knowing their fathers’ actions can be forgiven. Even their mothers find a way to accept the new union between their families.
After the bride and groom leave for their honeymoon, David Harvey finds Sarah Dillon and asks her to meet someone. She is confused but agrees. David takes her to a side room and introduces her to an older man, GORO HARADA, who was an officer in the Japanese army and worked with her husband in Saigon in November 1945. Goro tells her how much he respected her husband and was sorry to hear that he had died. After meeting him, Sara feels happier than she had in a long time. Decades of anger and resentment have drained away without her noticing. Her old friend, the Reverend George Bailey, would have been proud of her.