Breaking the Code

October 10, 2011
On his 81st birthday, Murray Fisher, a WWII veteran, gave his daughter Karen 400 letters he’d sent home to his family during the war. Growing up, as freelance writer Fisher-Alaniz tells in this engaging memoir, she had heard her father’s stories about his office job while stationed in Hawaii in the 1940s, but was never interested enough to ask questions. Then, as an adult, she realized that although he’d been a loving parent, what she knew about him filled up a single page—until she received the letters. Her curiosity sparked, she decides to make her way through her father’s vivid letters and suddenly has many questions, including why her father was so determined not to talk about his wartime experiences. While attempting to unearth her father’s past, she finds the opportunity to establish a new relationship. They begin having weekly lunches and visits, and her father opens up, revealing he’d actually been in naval intelligence as a Japanese code breaker, shipping overseas to Iwo Jima. As Fisher-Alaniz and her father continue their conversations , she hears a devastating secret her father has been holding onto for 60 years, and with which she must now deal.

September 1, 2011

Debut memoirist Fisher-Alaniz offers a sensitive account of how she helped her war-veteran father confront a traumatic memory he had carried with him for more than 50 years.

On the day Murray Fisher turned 81, he gave the author two notebooks filled with more than 400 pages of letters he had written to his parents while he was stationed at Pearl Harbor during World War II. Baffled, the author took it upon herself to not only read and transcribe his letters (several of which appear in the book) but to understand the motivations behind her father's unexpected gesture. She knew he had served in the Navy and that he had "spent his days working in an office." She did not know, however, that he had been trained to copy Katakana, the code the Japanese military had used to communicate top-secret information. Her father could never speak of his work to outsiders because "anyone could be a spy." In March 1945, Fisher and a fellow code breaker and friend were sent to Okinawa, where a shrapnel wound killed the friend. Fisher's grief and guilt were so intense that he suffered a temporary breakdown. This story of an adult child learning to understand a parent she thought she knew is simple and unpretentious. While the narrative lacks literary finesse, it is nevertheless commendable for how it breaks the silence surrounding PTSD. "Whether the veteran returned from war sixty years ago or six days ago," she writes, "one thing remains constant: it's time for us to talk and to listen."

Not the most elegant memoir, but a genuine tale told from the heart.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2011
As the Greatest Generation steadily dwindles, it becomes more imperative to chronicle their experiences. Thanks in large part to Ken Burns and the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, many heretofore reluctant veterans have been interviewed, but there are still countless others with stories to tell. After her aging father inexplicably gave her a cache of letters he had written to his parents during the war years, Fisher-Alaniz accompanied her father on an often traumatic but ultimately illuminating journey into his past. Shocked to learn that her reticent father had played a significant role in cracking katakana, the Japanese military code, she began meeting regularly with him to learn more about his war years. Breaking their own code of silence, father and daughter reach across the decades, recording an important chapter in history and forging a long-overdue personal bond.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)