In Yukie’s Island: My Family’s World War II Story, a family’s tranquil existence on tiny Bentenjima Island off the coast of Nemuro, Japan is shattered in 1945, as Allied forces were closing in on Japan, bombing city after city. Yukie and her siblings’ idyllic days of collecting seagull eggs and playing outside gave way to hunkering indoors in anticipation of their home turf becoming a war zone. Their fear became reality on July 15 of that year, when a two-day air raid by American bombers ravaged the area, just one month before WWII ended in Japan. The picture book is a deeply personal story about an actual family, created by members of multiple generations of that family.

Told from the perspective of then eight-year-old Yukie Kimura, whose father maintained the two lighthouses on Bentenjima during the war, this true story is co-written by Yukie; her son, Kōdo; and Steve Sheinkin (whose sister Rachel is Kōdo’s longtime partner). Kōdo, an artist now living in New York State, is also the book’s illustrator.

A Collaborative Chain

Yukie’s Island sprouted organically from Yukie’s sketches and memories, which she had shared with her son over the years. “I didn’t have any plans to make my mother’s childhood story into a book,” Kōdo said. “But seven or eight years ago, I told it to Steve, and he said, ‘This could be a picture book.’ He kept coming back to that, and finally we made a move.”

Though Sheinkin has authored numerous works of nonfiction for young readers, including the Newbery Honor Book Bomb, Yukie’s Island is his first picture book. And he encountered some new challenges.

“I had never written anything like this, which is shorter than a chapter of my typical books and seems so simple,” Sheinkin said. “Yet I’ve never done so many drafts of anything! When Kōdo started telling me stories about his mother’s childhood, the rich images practically appeared in the air above his head. Kōdo and I agreed from the start that this would be a true story, Yukie’s story, along with our own research of the setting and historical events of those years.”

Their collaboration began with written memories from Yukie, as well as her drawings of the island and its surroundings. From there, Sheinkin prepared questions for Yukie in English, which Kōdo translated into Japanese. He then translated his mother’s answers back into English.

“My job, as I saw it, was to help craft sentences that capture the spirit of Yukie’s voice, and to help arrange her memories into a satisfying story,” Sheinkin explained. “Kōdo and I took some small liberties in terms of arranging these memories into a narrative and condensing the action into one year. Yukie encouraged us to do this—to take her stories and, in her words, ‘play.’ ”

Finding Artistic Balance

The task of illustrating his mother’s story initially gave Kōdo pause. Letting go of the need for total accuracy helped take some of the pressure off. “Eventually, we decided to make it not pure nonfiction, but a story based on my mother’s memory and reconstructed with other factors.”

Since Kōdo didn’t have “good photo references of my mother at the age of eight,” he said, “I used my imagination based on my mother and my own childhood photos, because I often heard I look very much like her. After I finished all the paintings, she discovered a couple of old studio photographs from when she was five, and her face wasn’t too far away from Yukie in the book!”

In 2018, Kōdo and his mother took a trip to Bentenjima, which helped solidify his artistic vision. “Visiting the island brought me closer to my mother’s experience—I suddenly felt it in three dimensions, and I was very moved by the physical environment,” he recalled. “I tried to visualize the scenes in my mind like it was a scene from a movie, and then fix it on the canvas.”

Shadows of War

Kōdo and Sheinkin acknowledged the tricky challenge of revealing the realities of war in a picture book, yet expressed hope that Yukie’s story will bring readers a message of camaraderie and compassion.

“Wars affect all of our lives, including children’s lives, in a terrible way,” Kōdo said. “I think a book like Yukie’s Island might help us think deeply about other human beings and resist the urge to categorize them, especially as enemies. I want children to see that they could be Yukie. I want them to imagine how other people see the world. If teachers can use this book as a tool for kids to bridge the gap in history and feel a kinship with children growing up during a very different time, I would be very grateful.”

Ultimately, Sheinkin found hope in Yukie’s optimism. “One of the most amazing things to me is that Yukie remembers her childhood in mainly positive ways,” he observed. “She lived through a time of terrible fear and danger, but also had these moments of fun and wonder. I find her resilience very inspiring.”

Yukie’s Island: My Family’s World War II Story by Yukie Kimura, Kōdo Kimura, and Steve Sheinkin, illus. by Kōdo Kimura. Roaring Brook, $19.99 July 18 ISBN 978-1-250-20650-3