In Safe Passage, award-winning author Evelyn Iritani reveals one of WWII’s little-known diplomatic triumphs — the rescue of nearly 3,000 Allied civilians held by Japan in two exchanges at sea — and the high price that was paid by the thousands of innocent men, women and children — mostly of Japanese descent — who were traded to a country that was no longer, and may never have been, their home. Sojourners and immigrants, diplomats and thrill-seekers, storytellers and prostelytizers. Uprooted by a war of someone else’s making, this eclectic mix of humanity from both sides of the Pacific found themselves on a voyage across wartorn waters that would transform them in surprising, often tragic, and sometimes inexplicable ways.

Release date: March 10, 2026

Praise for Safe Passage:

“This stunning narrative reveals the hidden cost of wartime mercy—and the kinds of impossible choices that haunt us still.” —Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City

“This true-life tale of desperate and likeable people caught in the whirl of world war was impossible to put down.”  —Tim Egan, author of A Fever in the Heartland

“Safe Passage is a meticulously researched page-turner – one urgently needed at a time when we’re seeing immigrants and citizens abducted from American streets, held in illegal detention, and sent to countries where they’ve never lived before.”  —Frank Abe, lead author of We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration