Safe Passage

Evelyn Iritani
Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II
(Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, March 2026)

Read an excerpt in Smithsonian Magazine
Safe Passage featured in The New Yorker 
Read the review in Wall Street Journal
Read the starred Publishers Weekly review
One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026

An untold story of idealism, betrayal, and behind-the-scenes American–Japanese contacts in World War II.

In the fall of 1943, during some of the Pacific theater’s bloodiest battles, the United States and Japan pulled off a diplomatic coup― the exchange of civilians caught on the wrong side of the battlefield after Pearl Harbor. Nearly fifteen hundred Allied civilians trapped in Asia, mostly Americans, sailed through dangerous waters to an Indian port city where they were traded for an equivalent number of Japanese immigrants and their families sent from the Americas. The fate of the more than ten thousand Americans left behind rested on the success of this endeavor.

In Safe Passage, the award-winning journalist Evelyn Iritani reveals the herculean efforts of the American diplomat James Keeley to engineer these wartime exchanges despite great resistance from within and outside his government; the shipboard conflicts among passengers, including missionaries, revelers, and sharp-tongued journalists; and the moral compromises involved in securing their safe passage. Faced with too few bodies to trade and desperate to free Americans from perilous conditions, the United States uprooted and repatriated Japanese citizens of Latin America, sometimes against their will, while Japanese imprisoned in camps, many of them American citizens, were forced to choose between expulsion to a war zone or an uncertain future behind barbed wire. The result is a revelatory account of the hurdles to pursuing humanitarian action in wartime.

 

Praise for Safe Passage 

“Gripping and immersive.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

“An excellent recounting of an overlooked part of World War II history that should be required reading for students.” — Library Journal

“What an amazing story Evelyn Iritani tells in this groundbreaking book. It pulses with life, unknown historical details, and characters who leap from the page in dimensions of heroism and tragedy. This true-life tale of desperate and likable people caught in the whirl of world war was impossible to put down.” —Timothy Egan, author of A Fever in the Heartland

“Evelyn Iritani’s Safe Passage resurrects a lost chapter of World War II: a prisoner swap that saved American lives but also entangled Japanese families from Latin America. It is a gripping portrait of idealism colliding with desperation and compromise. Told with deep humanity and meticulously researched, 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

“Evelyn Iritani’s immersive and powerfully written investigation reveals an unusual moment of cooperation in a bitter war. She shows how people of Japanese ancestry in the United States and Latin America were shockingly uprooted and expelled from countries where they had made their homes. She has unearthed a stunning story of diplomatic intrigue, wartime racism, and moral compromise.” —Gary J. Bass, author of Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia

“Finally, someone has written the human story of the passengers aboard the Gripsholm and other prisoner-exchange ships and the desperate backchannel negotiations on both sides of the Pacific to rescue citizens stranded by Japan’s war of imperialism. Evelyn Iritani writes with the dramatic flair and narrative arc of a novelist to fill in a missing piece of the Japanese American experience. Safe Passage is a meticulously researched page-turner, and one that is urgently needed at a time when we’re seeing American citizens abducted from the 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

“In Safe Passage, Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Evelyn Iritani pulls back the curtain on one of the little-known humanitarian stories of WWII – the remarkable diplomatic intrigues that in the waning months of the war in the Pacific brought thousands of civilians on both sides safely home. In a world that overflows with innocents who find themselves the victims of today’s senseless wars, the lessons in this gripping story resonate with stunning clarity. This is history as it should be written–richly detailed, authoritative, meaningful, and yet as compellingly readable as the best fiction.” —Ken Cuthbertson, author of Nobody Said Not to Go: The Life, Loves, and Adventures of Emily Hahn