What are the motifs in The Land I Lost: Adventures of a Boy in Vietnam by Quang Nhuong Huynh?

The Loss of innocence is a recurring idea. The title of the book, The Land I Lost, tells the reader that the author feels that he has lost something very valuable in the time he has grown up and left his boyhood home behind. The telling of the story is thus treated with a heavy dose of nostalgia, and the author is seeing his boyhood through the proverbial "rose-colored glasses."