Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955. dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - The dust jacket describes this as "the stirring biography of a Japanese-American family -- and a people - whose bitter struggle ended in a victory for democracy." The family is that of Tosh Mio, a Japanese immigrant who came to America in 1903, settled and prospered in California, until he and his family were exiled to a relocation camp after Pearl Harbor was struck. Although told in the form of a novel, in his brief foreword the author notes the characters are real; the incidents all occurred. SIGNED by the author on the front endpaper. Edmiston was primarily a screen writer in Hollywood, who had trouble finding a publisher for this "documentary novel" - a "tribute to Japanese Americans and his manifesto for democracy. It deserves to be rediscovered as an early, multifaceted dramatization of the wartime experience, created by a white ally at a time when Nisei were unable to find mainstream outlets for their writing. . . Appearing two years before Okada's 'No No Boy' this is the first literary treatment of the draft resisters. One of the leaders of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) (who is quoted in the epigraph), stated 'This is the only book written about us that has guts. It should be in every Japanese American home.' The dramatization of the struggle of the returnees to return to their prewar lives amid terrorism, violence and vandalism by nightriders and exclusion by bigoted locals, is contrasted to the assistance provided by a heroic WRA resettlement officer, based on the author's father, who was himself targeted by ostracism, death threats, and even bullets fired into his house." (Greg Robinson, Discover Nikkei). 306 pp.