Rising Sons (Completed manuscript). 2023 (planned publication date)

This manuscript took a year to complete and was a labour of love that harks back to my days of living and working in Fiji over a 20-year period.

I say a ‘labour of love’ because the book is based on my late former brother-in-law, Peter Oyagawa’s, family story. Following Peter’s death in 2019, I worked closely with my niece, Peter’s daughter, Cherie, and her cousin Regina, Peter’s brother’s daughter, on telling the family story.

Rising Sons is the gut-wrenching story of a family torn apart by war but reunited through the power of a strong family bond. I interviewed family members and was fortunate enough to spend time with Peter before his untimely passing. Using memorabilia and dredging through online accounts of Japanese aliens interned during WWII, I was able to craft the story of Peter’s father Kintoku’s incredible life and detail the family dynasty he built with his Fiji family.

The story has more twists, turns and heartbreak than a Hollywood blockbuster. Recreating passages of the family history where little was known involved a level of creative licence and in-depth research into historical data, but the end result is a powerful story of hope and a passionate desire to search for, and uncover, the truth behind some deep held family secrets.

It’s a book that I hope will finally find its way to the shelves of bookstores everywhere.