Juliana Young Koo (center) was one of the first staff members at the UN protocol and liaison department in New York. [Photo provided to China Daily]

In early 1942, as Japanese troops invaded, Young was arrested. The family was driven from their home and took up residence in an old villa in Manila.

Over time, Young's colleagues came to his wife to seek shelter for themselves and their families, and she became the matriarch who helped more than 26 women and children survive in the three-bedroom house.

They raised poultry and pigs, planted vegetables in the garden and made all sorts of sauce by themselves, while bombs were going off in the streets in the town.

"I felt I must act calm because the children were already panicked at the sharp changes in their lives," Koo says in the book.

In 1945, the US troops took over Manila from Japan, and she was told Young had been killed by the Japanese military soon after he was taken prisoner because he refused to betray his country.

Koo decided to move to the United States because she felt there would be better education and opportunities for her children in that country, and because Shanghai was still under Japanese control.