Around this time Lifton began writing children's books including Joji and the Dragon Morrow, 1957, The Dwarf Pine Tree, Atheneum, 1963, and The Rice-cake Rabbit W.W. Norton & Company, 1966.

[4] In 1975 Lifton published Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter which was about her search for her birth mother.

[2] Her husband Robert further illustrated on her book "Twice Born," and her other activities while both were in Japan as follows: "(Robert Jay) Lifton’s formative experience was the research he did while accompanied by his wife, B.J.—a writer, an adoption therapist, and a leading spokesperson for adoption reform—whom he had married en route to his assignment in Japan, after being caught up in the doctor draft.

In her book Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter, she describes how she moved in with a Japanese family, and found a job as a journalist working for the Japan Times, and then the Tokyo Evening News.

Later, she would collaborate with the renowned Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe on the book A Place Called Hiroshima.