What are the motifs in So Far from the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins?

Resilience and survival make up the motif in the story. Surviving in wartime and poverty is hard. Mother lives until she is certain that her daughters will have a fighting chance at survival, then dies. She might have been running on sheer determination up until reaching Kyoto and discovering that her parents died in the war. Ko and Yoko do whatever they can to survive after Mother's death, and they hang onto their educations despite their mean living conditions.