This inspiring memoir tells how young Japanese print and publishing workers maintained links and sustained organisation between workers during the height of Japanese military aggression before and during World War II. It destroys the myth that all Japanese people supported the war, and provides a thrilling account of worker organising in conditions of repression that has lessons for up-and-coming unionists of today.

First published in Japanese in 1964, this is the first English translation of the 1981 edition. Kaye Broadbent discovered this unique book in a Japanese archive. In 2016 she visited the author, Masao Sugiura, in Tokyo. The interview with him, then aged 102, is included in the book. The photo shows Kaye with the author in 2018.