"In the early 1950s, when I was a young girl, my parents were asked to host some foreign post-doctoral students for Sunday dinners as a means of showing them a part of our culture. In retrospect I find it remarkable that my parents opened their home to a group of Japanese men less than 10 years after WWII.

One of the men was an ophthalmologist who had a daughter my age. On one occasion he brought me a porcelain doll dressed in traditional Japanese garb. For many years it was kept safely in a box, but recently I decided to display it in my home. Seeing it every day reminds me of my parents' willingness to reach out in peace to a former enemy country, and the doctor's willingness to reach out to a young girl with this token of peace. Quilted into the background are the Japanese symbols for 'token of peace'."