Who is Anna Schoene from The Distant Land of My Father and what is their importance?

Anna Schoene is born in Shanghai, China to Joseph and Genevieve Schoene. Her father is a Shanghai millionaire and the family lives in a villa on Hongjoa Road in the western suburbs of Shanghai. Even though her parents are Americans, her father, the son of missionaries, has always lived in China except for the years he attended Vanderbilt University. He loves Shanghai and tries to instill this love in her. She is six years of age when the war between the Japanese and Chinese breaks out and her father is kidnapped. She begins school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart during the fighting. After the Japanese takeover of Shanghai, her father takes her to the Japanese sector where they have problems with the gendarmes which scare her. A week after her seventh birthday, Anna and her mother sail for Los Angeles, arriving on February 15, 1938.