Sadako Okuda, Pamela B. Vergun

Born in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, in 1914, Okuda was a sewing teacher on a small island some 35 miles outside of Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945. Even at that distance, both her sight and hearing on her right side were permanently damaged. Since 1960 and until her recent retirement, she taught home economics at a non-traditional high school in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. She still lives in the mountains she loves, close to her school.The translator and editor, Pamela Vergun, earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University, her Masters Degree from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and her B.A. in Language Studies from UC Santa Cruz. She currently lives in the Portland, Oregon area with her husband and two children.The illustrations were created by Mia Nolting, a freelance illustrator who lives in Portland, Oregon. The Foreword is by Catherine Thomasson, past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility.