Ohoshisama no Rail

An autobiographical account, *Ohoshisama no Rail* follows young Kobayashi Chitose, a Japanese girl coming of age in North Korea under imperial occupation. As World War II intensifies, the conflict gradually encroaches upon her everyday existence—from the petty disappointment of being unable to obtain the school backpack she longed for, to the far graver blow of her father being conscripted into the military. Yet the war's end brings no reprieve. With years of oppression and persecution fresh in memory, the Korean populace, aligned with a Chinese-backed communist regime, begins to systematically terrorize the Japanese civilians remaining in the North. Fearing violent reprisal against him as a former imperial soldier, Chitose's father stakes everything on a desperate gamble: smuggling his family out of the northern zone and across the 38th parallel into the American-occupied South.