Over sixty-years ago the Emperor of Japan called upon his 70 million subjects to bear the unbearable and stand submissively by as Allied Forces swarmed across their home islands. Each side had ample reasons for hating the other. The Americans had Pearl Harbor, The Bataan Death march and the ruthless treatment of prisoners by the Japanese. The Japanese had Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were just the top items for the highly personalized lists of both sides. What followed suprised the vanquished as well as the victors. Rise from the Ashes tells the stirring account of Sean O'Neal, a U.S. Marine who slogged through the bloodiest battles of the South Pacific and came to hate the entire Yellow Race. He is about to face the toughest battle of all; peacetime in Tokyo, when he is assigned to duty as an MP and meets Michiko Matsumoto, the widow of a kamikaze pilot and her daughter, 4-year old Hiroko who was born on the day that her father took part in the bombing of Pearl Harbor.