RETURNING THE SWORD

An American veteran returns an artifact of war to its Japanese owners.

With the deployment of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, World War II came to a dramatic, definite end. After his tour of duty in the Pacific, Captain Orval Amdahl arrived in Nagasaki with occupying forces and saw firsthand the destruction caused by those bombs. There, his superiors rewarded him with the spoils of war—a sword from a stockpile of surrendered Japanese weapons. He headed home to Minnesota, sword in hand, a tag identifying its owner attached. Over half a century later, a World War II researcher helped him find the sword owner’s family, to whom Amdahl returned it in a public ceremony. With simple, realistic illustrations, this picture book tells Amdahl’s story soberly and with utmost respect. The bombs devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while memories of war lingered with veterans their entire lives, and Stelson adeptly demonstrates how the return of a symbolic object cultivated a real feeling of reconciliation between the two sides. The story works best in conversation with Stelson’s transcendent A Bowl Full of Peace (2020), which shows how the consequences of war haunt its victors as well as its victims and how mutual understanding may foster meaningful peace.

A cleareyed, compelling recollection of one soldier’s story.