(This is a photo of my grandfather riding toward Kalaupapa which was situated in a valley to make it difficult for its inhabitants to escape. He's the one without a hat.)My mother, her two sisters and a brother (who died at 3) were born there and loved the islands but my grandmother was homesick and constantly worried that my grandfather would contract the dreaded disease. After about 8 years, they returned to Japan.
I won't go into the whole history of my mother's life back in Japan and then her family's move to Korea where my grandfather was a minister in a large temple compound. The Japanese were occupying Korea then but I'll stay out of the politics of that situation. The war, my grandfather being sent to Siberia, mom and her family's harrowing trek back to Japan, several times nearly being killed by Russian soldiers, starvation, etc. are all stories my brother and I grew up with.
When they returned to Japan, poverty and starvation threatened. They were forced to live with the support of relatives. At 18, being the eldest, mom was sent to Hawaii to marry so that she could lighten the burden and perhaps help. I can't imagine what that must have been like. Eventually, her two sisters came to Hawaii because they also had their American citizenship and wished to be with their sister.
In Japan, the family survived and eventually did well. My grandfather became a priest to a large prestigious temple. My mother's baby brother became a highly respected judge. The baby sister who remained in Japan is a historian and married to a retired newspaper editor.
I grew up hearing stories of this mythical family but they were really a nebulous sort of connection that was attached to us only by letters that I could not read and packages that contained exotic things.
While in college, I had the opportunity to spend 6 weeks in Japan. Three weeks would be course work and we would have independent travel for the other three. My uncle, so important a High Court judge now was then only a student not a whole lot older than me. He came to pick me up to deliver me to the temple where I lived under the careful supervision of my grandparents, aunt and her newspaper reporter husband. It was an incredible time of discovery and a sort of enlightenment for me.
My mother did not return to Japan until my grandfather who had survived Siberia was on his deathbed. That is another story but hers to tell.
I returned to Japan again with my own family a dozen years ago. I thought then that it was almost like coming full circle but now I see that it wasn't so. I remember my aunt telling me before I left Japan with my beautiful family that she wanted me to understand what a wonderful husband I had... that I should know that they were very happy for me. I remembered then that I had been suffering a bit of romantic angst when I was there the first time.
So now Art and I return again, but this time with my brother and mother. It will be my brother's first time. He will now see with his own eyes what I have seen and feel what I felt. My mother will be able to share all the history she has held inside her all these years. Now, perhaps, this is full circle.
