War Brides of Japan Marches Forward And, A Sister Search
Thursday, February 4, 2016
Aloha, Hip Hapa Homeez!
Arrigatou gozaimasu for your continued support in both reading this blog and in ‘liking’ our various Facebook fan pages. A list of the links appears at the end of this post.
Arrigatou gozaimasu for your continued support in both reading this blog and in ‘liking’ our various Facebook fan pages. A list of the links appears at the end of this post.The good news is that we’re in the midst of pre-production for our documentary, War Brides of Japan.
The bad news is that Your Hip Hapa will have little time to devote to the intense interviews posted here in the past.
However, our featured Hip Hapa Homee this bi-month is E. Dawn Samuel who has a special request for you. Please read her plea below, and respond to her directly if you have any information you feel might be helpful.
Meanwhile, we’ll keep you updated about our War Brides of Japan documentary at our Facebook fan page as well as at our new website—once it’s built, that is.
Greetings, friends.
PLEASE HELP! I’m writing in pursuit of lost love. I'm searching for a woman and her child on behalf of my father, an 86 year-old African American veteran living in upstate New York. He recently came to me to ask a favor and proceeded to tell me the most amazing story. Here are the Cliff Notes:
Toward the end of WWII, at the young age of 18 or so, my dad and his twin brother went off to war and were stationed in Japan. There my dad met and fell in love with a mixed-race Japanese/German girl named Natasha. One day in 1948 or '49, she came to him, sat in his lap and said, “You are a handsome man and I am a pretty woman. So, I’m sure this is going to be a beautiful baby.” And with that romantic remark, he was thrilled at the prospect of parenthood and the three of them becoming a family. But as fate would have it, shortly thereafter, his unit was shipped off to Korea and the young lovers where separated.
The military, which was segregated at the time, heartlessly sent the black troops to fight with only their summer gear and, cruelly, their cold weather gear never arrived. With a lengthy winter that reached temperatures as low as 40 degrees below zero, horrifically, the majority of his unit froze to death. Thankfully, my dad and a lucky few survived.
But when he returned to the apartment in Nagasaki where Natasha lived, her roommate--shocked and completely taken aback to see him alive--told him that thinking he was dead, Natasha had married a tech sergeant from another unit and they had immigrated to the U.S. The roommate also told my dad he was the father of a baby girl. So, with very little information to help him pursue finding Natasha, he was shipped off again and again.
Once, he was finally discharged from the service years later, my dad had no idea of how to find them and no idea of Natasha’s circumstances. And, he didn’t want to blow up her life. So, he harbored two major secrets: first; he kept the secret that he was alive from Natasha and; second, he kept the secret of fathering a child during the war from his family. For more than 65 years, my Uncle Richard was the only other person who knew, until my father asked me to find them for him over the Christmas holiday.
“Babe, will ya help me out and find your sister for me?” he asked me. “I wanna meet her and see Natasha again before I die. She and your momma are the only women I’ve ever loved, and I need to see my firstborn. So please babe, find them for me.”
My dad is 86, has early Alzheimer’s/COPD and is on full oxygen. So, that’s why I’m trying to find this particular war bride. I’m searching for my sister! With a heart full of joyous emotions (I’m crying as I’m writing this now), I’m searching for my sister! Somewhere out there, my dad has a daughter that he’s never seen, but desperately wants to. So, I’m searching for my big sister! Honored and humbled that my dad chose me to share his deepest secrets, I’m searching for my sister! Hopeful that she will be accepting of our dad and as thrilled as I am to learn of a new sibling, I’m desperately searching for my sister! And compelled by a sense of privileged duty and with nothing but love in my heart and hope in my soul, I am searching for my sister!
E. Dawn Samuel
Yayoi Lena Winfrey fan page on Facebook (sorry, but Your Hip Hapa can’t add any more friends to her regular profile page)
Don’t forget you can become a member of our Hip Hapa Homeez group on Facebook and post articles about being ethnically mixed, or an interracial couple, or a blended family, or a transracial adoptee, and more.
And, please join our cyber voyage as we travel to film the War Brides of Japan!
Your Hip Hapa,
Yayoi