Meeting Relatives in Japan for the First Time
I met my relatives in Japan for the first time in the spring of 2012 at the height of cherry blossom season. Two of my cousins live in Hiroshima and four cousins live in Miyakonojo, Kagoshima, and Kirishima in Miyazaki prefecture.
I learned that you don’t have to go to a park known for cherry blossom trees to see cherry blossoms as they were everywhere. There were reports replete with maps and reporters on the evening news as the blossoms opened up starting in Kyushu in the south all the way to Hokkaido in the north. It was hard not to share the excitement and anticipation of the appearance of the beautiful blossoms that fill the country with delicate splendor.
During the season, complimentary cherry blossom tea is served in restaurants. Prolific art and poetry is inspired by the cherry blossom, the unofficial flower of Japan, and email and letters usually contain some mention of the season and status of the blossoms. They are symbols of the ephemeral quality of life and are revered. When they fall, they dance off the branches aided by gentle winds and twirl like ballerinas as they brush the ground.
The trip was a life changing event for me because I fell in love with all my relatives, the Japanese people, and the country itself. In Los Angeles, I never knew my aunts and uncles because during World War II after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government incarcerated all those of Japanese descent, 120,000 people, in concentration camps mainly in western states far removed from the coast. The U.S. Army did not have any experience in building barracks for families and the women suffered through the humiliation of not having any doors or partitions to the toilets for a time, the food was rationed canned food and government surplus, and there were lines for food, for the toilets, and the laundry. There was dust all over, and the barracks were so similar that children often could not find their way back home.
My parents, who met and married while at Manzanar, were evacuated from Los Angeles to hastily converted horse stalls at the Santa Anita Race Track where there was no relief from the lingering smell of horse manure. After a few months, my parents were among those who were moved to Manzanar, the first camp. The meals were served in mess halls at different times and separated by age groups, so the family unit became fractured. Relatives were sent to different camps. After the war, there wasn’t much interaction among our relatives and I’ve always felt the absence of an extended family in my life.
One of the saddest offshoots of the war hysteria and hatred of anyone of Japanese ancestry was the rounding up of orphans and foster care children, some as young as six months and with as little as one-eighth ancestry. They were taken from orphanages and homes from San Diego through Alaska, 101 in all, and housed in barracks called the Children’s Village in Manzanar, the only orphanage among the camps.*
I hope to become fluent in Japanese so I can discover my cousins’ journey through the devastation of the country after two atomic bombs and the other bombs that destroyed so much of their country, not to mention the frequent earthquakes, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, and recently the Fukushima nuclear disaster. My cousin was removed from near the window of their home just minutes before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima; her mother died of leukemia but she and her brother are fortunately in good health. If I do not master the language, they know they are in my heart, and I know I am in theirs.
*Source: http://articles.latimes.com/1997-03-11/news/mn-37002_1_manzanar-orphans