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Grenade, Alan Gratz
Two boys. Two grenades.
The day the Americans land on Okinawa during World War II, the Japanese Army pulls Hideki Kaneshiro and all the other boys out of middle school and gives them each two grenades. One grenade, they tell Hideki, is to kill an American soldier.
The other grenade is to kill himself.
Ray Majors is a newly-minted Marine from Nebraska, hitting the beach on Okinawa for his first action of World War II. He left home to get away from his father, who came back from World War I a broken, angry man. A monster. But how can Ray survive the Typhoon of Steel that is the Battle of Okinawa without becoming a monster himself?
Hideki and Ray are destined to meet — and when they do, both their lives will be changed forever.