Green Tea and Cherry Ripe

GREEN TEA AND CHERRY RIPE tells the story of six Japanese women who married Australian servicemen after the Second World War, their efforts to build new lives in Australia and the challenges they faced in an alien land. In 1945 Japan was a bombed-out nation in ruins, its people living in poverty. Precious kimonos were exchanged for rice. Australia was one of the nations that provided men for the Allied Occupation forces; officially they could not socialize with the Japanese. Eventually about 600 of these servicemen married Japanese women, and, after considerable resistance from the Australian Government, brought their wives to Australia from 1952 onwards. The women came to a new homeland which made some of them feel uneasy and strangely out of place. Their new families wanted them to become Australians, but their own language and lifestyle often prevented them from adapting and communicating.