Several years ago, I discovered some family secrets.
Dad’s elderly cousin, Robert, told me that during the war, he was invited to tea with a Japanese man who was later hung for war crimes. This man, as head of the Kempeitai (secret police) was responsible for the deaths of over a million civilians and prisoners of war.
My parents, Masa and Yoko, invited an American mass murderer into our home when I was seven years old. Everyone knew that not only had he killed 80,000 men, women and children, he said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
With family secrets like these, it’s not easy for me to sleep at night. So what can I do? Tell stories.
Chapter One Yūrei 幽霊 Japanese American Ghosts
2016 Boulder, Colorado
Mom was so annoyed with my efforts to write my parents’ love story, she said, “Watashi ni hanashita. He spoke to me. Robert Oppenheimer spoke to me. In 1964.”
That got my attention. I looked up from Dad’s letters splayed across her kitchen table, took off my glasses and stared at her. She was eighty-two years old. Mom’s eyes were still clear and skin smooth. She kept the same erect posture she always had. Only her grey hair and a few age spots betrayed her age. Without Dad around anymore, Mom was the only one who held the keys to the past. Her English had deteriorated over the last decade but my Japanese was good enough to know she wasn’t babbling. Yet. I had my doubts. I was in the middle of translating Dad’s essay about how he met Mom in 1955 Tokyo. “Nani? What?” I said. “What are you talking about?”
Normally, Mom and I never talked about Dad’s profession as a theoretical physicist. Dad first came to this country in 1952 when he was 29 years old as a research associate at a physics lab at Duke University. Mom was a high school graduate, nine years younger than Dad, who joined Dad three years later when he started working as a professor at the university. They didn’t seem to have much in common other than their Japaneseness. They were a mystery to me. How did a physicist and a bank clerk end up together? Why did they come to America? My parents, especially Dad, told me nothing. Nothing about his past. Nothing about why he came to America in the first place. No explanation of how his name Masamichi was transformed into “Seth” as he was known by fellow physicists. Mom also said nothing about why she married Dad. She only gave me tidbits of her traumatic childhood in Tokyo. WWII began when she was ten years old. She was one of over a million people made homeless by the firebombing of Tokyo. She told me about eating cabbage soup and crickets. As a teenager, Mom watched her mother die from the lack of medicine and food.
I learned not to ask too many questions. I loved my parents but this shroud of secrecy kept me wondering about the past.
So I was thrilled when Mom found hundreds of Dad’s letters, journals and diaries, a year after he died at the age of 91. While he was alive, Mom did not dare snoop in his office so she had no idea what he kept in there. We found Dad made carbon copies of all his letters from when he first arrived in America! Many file boxes filled with Japanese and English correspondence to scientist colleagues in Japan and in the States. But I found one box labeled “Yoko” Mom’s name. I hit the jackpot! The thirty-two year old physicist, Seth, back in Tokyo after three years in America, was introduced to the pretty woman nine years his junior by a friend. Dad’s meticulous account of his blind date with Mom opened the door to a side of him I never knew.
I translated Dad’s account of their first date, “Sometime in the middle of the movie, without really thinking about it, I found my hand on top of Yoko’s hand. Completely natural for me to do on a “date”. In this situation, some women get angry, some start breathing fast with excitement, and some respond with affection. Yoko was the last type. She put her other hand on top of our hands and leaned closer to me. Her body brushed against my arm and I felt the swelling of her breast. What an intimate expression. Out of all the women I remembered, Yoneko was the most composed and unhesitant in her response.
Finally, here was some evidence of the romance I wanted to find. Dad hinted at relationships with other women during his first years in America. So like any good American daughter, I decided to piece together their Love Story. A story to give meaning to my existence.
But Mom was not cooperating. She said, “Zenzen oboeteinnai. I don’t remember any of this nonsense.”
I excused her lack of enthusiasm. Mom’s burned out after taking care of Dad for the last several years. He had several mini strokes but she kept him at home until he died.
So either Dad was lying or Mom had gone senile. I desperately wanted to believe in Dad’s version. Even though he was an enigma my entire life, I hoped that these letters would spark insight into a meaningful past life. Although I was a failure in my own marriages, I needed Mom and Dad’s story of their sixty year marriage to prove my worth. See? I come from a good family with solid values.
Mom said, “Dadi wa muzukashii. Dad was so difficult. But he wouldn’t talk with me. He had me take him to a psychiatrist.”
It was true. During his last years, Dad became even harder to understand. The mini strokes affected his already limited language skills. I asked him, “Why did you leave Japan and come to America?”
He mentioned a cousin, Dr. Ishii. I looked him up and learned he was a pathologist a few years older than Dad. Apparently Dr. Ishii was famous for a report on the atom bomb. Apparently the first report on the effects of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I ordered the book on Amazon. It was about radiation burns and poisoning. The grainy black and white photos of the bomb victims were horrifying. One was of a blackened corpse of a child who had raised his/her arm to shield the eyes against the burning rays of the bomb. I was so repulsed by the images that I stuck the book in the back of the closet and tried to forget it.
So Mom’s mention of Robert Oppenheimer immediately reminded me of the horrible photos I tried to forget. I gently tried to doubt her claim. “Are you sure it wasn’t Frank Oppenheimer, the younger brother?” I knew Dad had worked with Professor Frank Oppenheimer at one point.
My mother said, “Chigau. No. It was Robert, the older brother.” She was adamant but she wasn’t going to plead to have me believe her. She sipped the genmai cha that had grown cold. The nutty tea mixed with rice I like more than the Celestial Seasonings teas that crowd her cupboard. We were both careful to avoid caffeine because of our insomnia.
Is that possible? Robert Oppenheimer, speaking to Mom? In this house? 1964. I was seven years old then. Mom’s details, the chirashi zushi she prepared for the party, the Oppenheimer brothers invited as the guests of honor, the taller Oppenheimer discreetly asking her for a private conversation, her leading him to the unfinished addition in our house and my own vague memories of serving hors d'oeuvres to the guests - convinced me it did happen.
Mom said, “Kare watashi ni ayamatta. He apologized to me.”
Chills ran up my spine. We were sitting in the same place Oppenheimer asked my mother for forgiveness for his most famous creation - the atom bomb. I immediately thought of the terrible injuries documented by Dad’s cousin, Dr. Ishii. I didn’t bother to ask Mom if she forgave Robert Oppenheimer for the deaths of 80,000 Japanese men, women and children and the possibility of our own total annihilation.
Suddenly the love story I was trying to write shrunk to insignificance. Which is probably what Mom wanted to do. Stupid American daughter, listen to the ghosts instead of your own dreams.
All those ghosts came creeping back into my life three years later when the pandemic forced me to isolate in my Seattle condo. Armed with Mom’s Oppenheimer anecdote, Dad’s cousin’s atomic bomb report, internet research and my dread, I began piecing together Paper Ghost, a historical fiction novel. My family’s American Dream has turned into more of a nightmare. But a uniquely Japanese American nightmare.
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Looking forward to reading more.