The memoir narrates the life of Gwen Harold (1906-1990), an American from Tennessee who in 1931 married Hidenari "Terry" Terasaki (b.1900), a Japanese diplomat. He was first secretary at the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was bombed, was one of the staff who helped translate the Japanese declaration of war and delivered it (late) to the U.S. government and (as
Gwendolen Terasaki wrote in her memoirs) earlier sent secret messages to Japanese pacifists seeking to avert war. The couple and their daughter Mariko were, like all Axis diplomats, interned in 1942 and repatriated via neutral Angola later that year. Terasaki held various posts in the Japanese foreign affairs department up to 1945 when he became an advisor to the emperor, and was the official liaison between the imperial palace and General
Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Allied Commander.
Mariko and her mother left Japan in 1949 so that Mariko could attend East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee. Terry died in 1951 in Japan at the age of 50.
During the scene in which the Japanese ambassador tries to persuade Gwen to call off the marriage, he seems to hint at a possible conflict between the two countries. However, it is unlikely that he would have been aware of any definitive war aims in 1935, as Japan was still at peace with China. Soon after, Japan would declare war and, in protest against its actions, the United States would issue an oil embargo against Japan, escalating the disagreement between the two and paving the way for war.
The speech that
Hirohito gives on the radio at the end of the film is a part of the actual recording of the speech that was played to announce plans of surrender. However, Terry's translation for Gwen is actually only bits and pieces of the much longer speech, but it sounds as though he is translating it word for word.
