Back on track, my friends, back on track....
My posts have been vacant as of late, so time for a little fill in:
In regards to my last post in memory of Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, I would like to tell you all a story....
Mr. Morita was an intriguing man, and one of the few celebrities that I would ever want to meet, just to talk to him about his time in the U.S. interment camps in WWII. I read many books filled with stories told by the survivors of such camps, along with books concerning the displacement of Native Americans, and African slavery. History, in particular the overlooked parts of the development of the U.S.A., intrigued me as a child (and still does).
My mother was friends with an older Japanese woman for the years when my dad was stationed in Louisiana, a woman I'll call Shiri in this post. Shiri lived on the fringes of Nagasaki when the atom bomb was dropped. She escaped with her life, and unable to produce new life of her own. The radiation rendered her infertile, yet she was able to find love, married a gentle man, and moved to the U.S.A. Instead of giving up on life, Shiri put her energies into making homemade dolls, stuffed animals, and other toys for my sisters and I (and other children too). She was a mother in every sense of the word, although she had no offspring of her own.
I wish I still had the toys she had given me as a child...
My posts have been vacant as of late, so time for a little fill in:
In regards to my last post in memory of Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, I would like to tell you all a story....
Mr. Morita was an intriguing man, and one of the few celebrities that I would ever want to meet, just to talk to him about his time in the U.S. interment camps in WWII. I read many books filled with stories told by the survivors of such camps, along with books concerning the displacement of Native Americans, and African slavery. History, in particular the overlooked parts of the development of the U.S.A., intrigued me as a child (and still does).
My mother was friends with an older Japanese woman for the years when my dad was stationed in Louisiana, a woman I'll call Shiri in this post. Shiri lived on the fringes of Nagasaki when the atom bomb was dropped. She escaped with her life, and unable to produce new life of her own. The radiation rendered her infertile, yet she was able to find love, married a gentle man, and moved to the U.S.A. Instead of giving up on life, Shiri put her energies into making homemade dolls, stuffed animals, and other toys for my sisters and I (and other children too). She was a mother in every sense of the word, although she had no offspring of her own.
I wish I still had the toys she had given me as a child...