May 1943. The Battle of Attu was raging on the Aleutian island, as an impenetrable fog and Arctic winds that combined to create some of the worst weather on Earth. Educated in America, Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi was called to enlist in the army of his native Japan, and this young doctor reluctantly agreed. As Mark Obmascik details here, Tatsuguchi kept a diary of events in this forgotten theater of the war, never knowing that it would be found by an American soldier named Dick Laird. Reeling from his own combat experiences, Laird—and later, other soldiers—found solace in the diary, which showed the common humanity on both sides of the battle. Four decades later, Obmascik recounts, Laird sought closure by attempting to return the diary to Tatsuguchi's daughter.