By Kevin Seabrooke

Long and difficult, beset by bureaucracy, xenophobia and suspicion, the process of trading Allied civilians who had become trapped in Axis countries with the outbreak of world war for Axis civilians who had likewise become trapped in the United States was an exhausting process for American diplomat James Hugh Keeley Jr., who was charged with making it all happen.

Iritani (along with co-author Nancy Cleeland) won a 2004 Pulitzer Prize for the Los Angeles Times series, “The Walmart Effect,” investigating how the company’s push for lower prices impacted labor practices and international trade.

Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II (Evelyn Iritani, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, NY, 480 pp., March 10, 2026 $33 HC)