The Girl with the White Flag

The Girl with the White Flag

Author: Tomiko Higa

Publisher: Dell Publishing

Place and Date of publication: New York 1992

Where i found the book: I found this book at Christian Heritage School Library

Number of Pages:127

~Story Review~

This book is about a Japanese woman named Tomiko Higa, who retells about her life when she was a young girl living in Okinawa, Japan, around the time of WWII, when she was 5 years old. She is living with her 2 elders sisters, her elder brother, and her father when suddenly, one day Tomiko's father comes back with shocking news."Now I want you all to listen carefully. There's going to be fighting here in Okinawa very soon. Lifes not going to be peaceful for us anymore. You must be prepared, so when the time comes, you'll be able to keep your head and know what to do." It was until about a month later that Tomiko was to learn something of the tradgedy of war. This story tells about the survival of Tomiko in World War 2 who later on in the book gets seperated from her siblings and makes a journey to find them. The signifigance of the title " The Girl with the White Flag" is that after the war was over, Tomiko was told to hold the flag up and a picture wasd taken of her. The genre for this book is an Autobiography

~Christian Perspective~

The themes for this book are war and violence and survival. Even though Christians do not agree with most of these themes,I don't think this book should neccesarily be titled Christian or non-Christian. This book is just about an innocent 5 year old girl who is caught up during the war. Tomoki never really talked about God or thought about the subject. Tomiko was a very good child, even though she got into trouble sometimes. But she didn't have anything against God. But Tomiko did show good character of love, kindness, and gentleness. Even if a good person isn't Christian doesn't mean they should be labelled as bad. But this book wasn't written in a Christian perspective and everybody mentioned in the book isn't Christian but some showed good character like Tomiko did and acted Christ-like.

~My Thoughts~

I thought that this book was a good book and found it somewhat interesting. Survival/ War books aren't exactly my favourite, but wasn't too bad. It shows me how a young child would react and felt like during the war. I am just really proud of the author for putting a great effort of explaining this and fitting it into a 127 page book. It also makes me think of how people today shouldn't take things for granted because Tomiko literally had nothing but the clothes on her back and how she would search dead soldier's backpacks for her to find food for her to survive on for a couple of days until she'd find another backpack. I'd suggest this to people who LIKE autobiographies, survival and war type themes.

I hope you'd enjoy the book if you are reading it! :) and by the way, Go Peeta!!!