Oh where to begin? About 5 generations ago, that's where.
We had several main reasons for engineering our family move to Japan 3 1/2 years ago. One was for the family adventure - but we could have gone anywhere for that and my list of places I'd love to explore is quite long.
The other main reason was to allow Ethan and Ryan the chance to create a connection to the country and culture that Kevin's family had come from - albeit several generations ago. We knew that Kevin's family was from Kumamoto, a prefecture on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. Beyond that, we didn't know much about the family history in Japan.
Kevin is 4th generation Japanese-American and his great-grandparents moved to the US as children / young adults. The bloodline had been "pure Japanese" (though American) on both sides of the family until he married me. Alas.... you win some, you lose some. Shouganai. しょうがない。Such is life.
Shortly before we moved to Japan, I recorded (on my iphone, nothing fancy at all) Hibachan telling stories about when she was younger. Hibachan passed away in 2013 after we had been in Japan for 1 year. I wouldn't trade those 36 minutes of Hibachan video for anything (sadly, the files are too large to post here).
[Note: Hibachan is Alice Ayako (Murano) Fukuyama, 1922-2013. She is Ethan and Ryan's great-grandmother, which is why we call her Hibachan, the Japanese word for great-grandmother. She was also called Ness by her 11 siblings, a term often used for the oldest sister.]
Hibachan was born in the US but lived in Japan for 3 1/2 years during high school "to become a good Japanese wife" (her words, not mine). She seemed to understand and appreciate our move to Japan more than anyone else. I loved her for that.
So to further Ethan and Ryan's connection to their Japanese ancestry, we wanted to travel to Kumamoto so that they could at least experience a small part of the area where the Narimatsu, Ikoma, Fukuyama, and Murano families were from. And to be honest, I wanted to do it for Hibachan. We tried to get details about all branches of the family, but we had far more details about the Murano family (Hibachan's family), so we started there. We actually traveled during the Japanese "silver week" which is a holiday period that includes "Respect for the Aged Day" (get it, "silver" for the grey hair of the aged - this may not be why it's called Silver Week at all but I think it's fun to think that).
In preparation for traveling to Kumamoto, I bothered Auntie Take, Jean, Kathy, Auntie Susan and several other family members with multiple e-mails asking for family details (names, locations, anything they could remember) and memories that we could build upon. They were, as always, incredibly kind and gracious.
Auntie Take wrote:
We also knew from the Hibachan video that Hibachan had attended Oekotojogakkou in Kumamoto city for 3 1/2 years, basically a girls' finishing school that taught ikebana (flower-arranging), chayu (tea ceremony), manners, etc.
Several weeks before our planned trip to Kumamoto, I randomly called the Kumamoto International Center. The woman who answered was extremely kind and helpful. While we were on the phone, she researched the name of Hibachan's school and told me that it had changed to the Faith High School (フェイスがくいんことがっこう, Kumamoto-shi, Minami-takai 7-3-1）and then had closed in 2011. She also told me that any other family information would likely come from Tamana City office, which is about an hour away from Kumamoto.
Just as we were getting off the phone, as I was thanking her profusely in a mixture of English and Japanese, she mentioned that I should e-mail their office because the main person who spoke English well wasn't there that day. I didn't really expect to e-mail as I thought she had already done everything she could.
Oh how wrong I was!
Many days passed and I finally sent an e-mail to the Kumamoto International Center. Best decision everrrrrrr! I got an immediate response from Shimoda-san, which sparked near daily communications between the 2 of us for the next 2 weeks. I e-mailed him all the info we had, pictures of the family monument (ohaka), addresses from letters from decades ago..... He contacted the Tamana City office, told us all the documents we would need, and was an amazing help. When I asked him for the contact name of the person he had been talking to in Tamana so that we could speak to the same person when we showed up at the office, he then offered to meet us in Kumamoto the first morning we were there and take us by car to Tamana and help us navigate the whole search. How incredible is that? And kind? And 100% awesome-sauce! And now that someone else was investing so much in our search, it lit an even larger fire you-know-where to make sure we had all the information and documents we could get. Thus, the last minute scramble for birth certificates and documents to "prove" Kevin's connection to ancestors in Japan.
Friday morning, we met Shimoda-san at his office, only to learn that he was driving us in his PERSONAL vehicle. And this we only learned when his wife pulled up in the car, got out with her youngest child on her hip, and gave the car to us. What? What? What? We had noooooo idea this was happening. Apparently, his wife was planning to go with us too, but she had a last minute doctor appointment with her son.
We drove through the beautiful countryside to Tamana - bright green rice paddies, mountains in the distance, striking blue skies. When we arrived at the city office, we were met by our new best friend, Nakashima-san, and lead to a small conference room. We spent the next several hours handing over documents to prove a family relationship (the key piece was Hibachan's birth certificate) and receiving 22 pages of koseki (official family registers in Japan, 1 set of "originals" cost 6, 000 JPY). Much of it was written in a very old calligraphy script that they couldn't always read, requiring several times to call in reinforcements to help us figure out what it said. Still we spent about 2 1/2 hours in this small conference room taking notes and trying to trace and then draw the family roots. I asked a few times (over e-mail and in person) about how we might contact the 2 individuals whose names and addresses were written on a letter sent to Uncle Roy, probably about 20-30 years ago. When I got literally no response from either Shimoda-san or Nakashima-san, it (finally) became clear to me that there would be no contacting them or additional information about them. Alas... not likely to make contact with any long-lost living relatives.
Poor kids. It was not even a little bit fun for them after about the first 5 minutes.
Later in the day (after a lunch of tonkotsu ramen, a specialty of the Kumamoto area, which Kevin LOVED), we also walked through the old part of the Yadomi-mura. It was a short walk through small, twisty alleyways leading to a "main street" of older quaint buildings. We also met an old lady along the way, selling some type of honey pastry. We chatted with her for a while and she didn't remember a Hirata family in this part of the village... alas.
We were told that Yokoshima is quite a large area, but we had no more details with which to focus our search. So, armed with a photograph, 2 little boys who like treasure hunts, and a lot of optimism, we headed to the main Yokoshima cemetery.
On the search, we saw snakes, spiders, and LOTS of mosquitoes, but sadly, no monument that looked like our photo. In the older section of the cemetery, we did see many a crumbling monument in various states of disrepair. Since the Murano monument was built by Tadaki and his brothers, we assume he was at least 20 when he built it. This means it was likely built around 1915 - or about 100 years ago. Even in the photo with Uncle Fred (maybe in the 1960's or 1970's), the monument had clearly aged a lot, so it's not too surprising that it might not exist anymore. At least, we tried.
We thought about Hibachan a lot that weekend and it may have been part of my way of saying good-bye to her, albeit 2 years after her death.
Per Kevin, being able to see the rice field of Yadomi-mura that my grandmother talked about, exploring the small streets where my grandmother likely visited, and searching for my great-grandfather's ohaka in Yokoshima-mura gave me a strong connection to my past which I will remember for a long time.
We had several main reasons for engineering our family move to Japan 3 1/2 years ago. One was for the family adventure - but we could have gone anywhere for that and my list of places I'd love to explore is quite long.
The other main reason was to allow Ethan and Ryan the chance to create a connection to the country and culture that Kevin's family had come from - albeit several generations ago. We knew that Kevin's family was from Kumamoto, a prefecture on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. Beyond that, we didn't know much about the family history in Japan.
Kevin is 4th generation Japanese-American and his great-grandparents moved to the US as children / young adults. The bloodline had been "pure Japanese" (though American) on both sides of the family until he married me. Alas.... you win some, you lose some. Shouganai. しょうがない。Such is life.
Shortly before we moved to Japan, I recorded (on my iphone, nothing fancy at all) Hibachan telling stories about when she was younger. Hibachan passed away in 2013 after we had been in Japan for 1 year. I wouldn't trade those 36 minutes of Hibachan video for anything (sadly, the files are too large to post here).
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| One of my favorite photos of Hibachan - Tahoe 2011 - she never passed up a chance for a little fun |
[Note: Hibachan is Alice Ayako (Murano) Fukuyama, 1922-2013. She is Ethan and Ryan's great-grandmother, which is why we call her Hibachan, the Japanese word for great-grandmother. She was also called Ness by her 11 siblings, a term often used for the oldest sister.]
Hibachan was born in the US but lived in Japan for 3 1/2 years during high school "to become a good Japanese wife" (her words, not mine). She seemed to understand and appreciate our move to Japan more than anyone else. I loved her for that.
So to further Ethan and Ryan's connection to their Japanese ancestry, we wanted to travel to Kumamoto so that they could at least experience a small part of the area where the Narimatsu, Ikoma, Fukuyama, and Murano families were from. And to be honest, I wanted to do it for Hibachan. We tried to get details about all branches of the family, but we had far more details about the Murano family (Hibachan's family), so we started there. We actually traveled during the Japanese "silver week" which is a holiday period that includes "Respect for the Aged Day" (get it, "silver" for the grey hair of the aged - this may not be why it's called Silver Week at all but I think it's fun to think that).
In preparation for traveling to Kumamoto, I bothered Auntie Take, Jean, Kathy, Auntie Susan and several other family members with multiple e-mails asking for family details (names, locations, anything they could remember) and memories that we could build upon. They were, as always, incredibly kind and gracious.
Auntie Take wrote:
HiSorry it's taken so long for me to respond to your mail. The picture I sent of the tomb was sent to me by Suzi. Nes,Waka, and I visited the site. Our grandfather, Suematsu's ashes are there. When grandmother, Kiyo (Ueda)passed away she too was interred there. Fred was in Japan then and I think Suzi may have a picture of him beside the tomb.KYUSHU is the southern most island in Japan and Kumamoto is one of its prefecture or ken.Yadomi mura is my mother's parents village where Waka and I stayed. Nesan must have help plant rice there. I remember how they tied a string on a stick and strung it on the width of the field so we would be guided to plant the rice in a straight line. She would visit us and take us to the movies, shopping and sightseeing. Even took us to Aso. Nesan was only a teenager. Waka was 6 or 7, I was 9 or 10. We were there less than a year but Nesan was there 3 1/2 yrs.Since my dad was born in Yokoshima mura, Kumamoto ken the tomb is probably in that vicinity. My mom was born in Yadomi mura,Kumamoto ken. Mom's parent's name Uhashiro Hirata & Tsuru Hirata.Hope some of this helps.Take care...love to all, auntie take
Then the googling began. I discovered that Yokoshima village (mura) had merged into Tamana-city (shi) in 2005 and no longer existed as an independent municipality. I asked friends to help me find the village names on Japanese maps; they could find Yokoshima-mura on the map, but neither of my friends could find Yadomi-mura on a map. Not sure why.HiMy mom's maiden name was Hirata. I have letters that mom wrote to me when she visited Japan in 1969-70. After the tour she stayed on to visit her hometown. I do recall her mentioning that she stayed at an onsen nearby and invited some relatives and friends for dinner. She had 21 guests. Of course she wrote to me in Japanese but I was able to get the gist of her message .I guess there wasn't any Muranos relatives left when dad and his family came to America. So the monument was being taken care of by in-laws.I can ask Yuri or Ted if they remember anything about it. He might remember.Good luckAuntie Take
We also knew from the Hibachan video that Hibachan had attended Oekotojogakkou in Kumamoto city for 3 1/2 years, basically a girls' finishing school that taught ikebana (flower-arranging), chayu (tea ceremony), manners, etc.
Several weeks before our planned trip to Kumamoto, I randomly called the Kumamoto International Center. The woman who answered was extremely kind and helpful. While we were on the phone, she researched the name of Hibachan's school and told me that it had changed to the Faith High School (フェイスがくいんことがっこう, Kumamoto-shi, Minami-takai 7-3-1）and then had closed in 2011. She also told me that any other family information would likely come from Tamana City office, which is about an hour away from Kumamoto.
Just as we were getting off the phone, as I was thanking her profusely in a mixture of English and Japanese, she mentioned that I should e-mail their office because the main person who spoke English well wasn't there that day. I didn't really expect to e-mail as I thought she had already done everything she could.
Oh how wrong I was!
Many days passed and I finally sent an e-mail to the Kumamoto International Center. Best decision everrrrrrr! I got an immediate response from Shimoda-san, which sparked near daily communications between the 2 of us for the next 2 weeks. I e-mailed him all the info we had, pictures of the family monument (ohaka), addresses from letters from decades ago..... He contacted the Tamana City office, told us all the documents we would need, and was an amazing help. When I asked him for the contact name of the person he had been talking to in Tamana so that we could speak to the same person when we showed up at the office, he then offered to meet us in Kumamoto the first morning we were there and take us by car to Tamana and help us navigate the whole search. How incredible is that? And kind? And 100% awesome-sauce! And now that someone else was investing so much in our search, it lit an even larger fire you-know-where to make sure we had all the information and documents we could get. Thus, the last minute scramble for birth certificates and documents to "prove" Kevin's connection to ancestors in Japan.
First Stop: Kumamoto Castle
And finally the day came (though I got a little nervous when Mt. Aso erupted a few days before we left and there was an evacuation of a small area near the volcano). On September 17, 2015 we flew to Kumamoto and spent the afternoon exploring the huuuuge Kumamoto Castle, our every move punctuated by comments such as "Hibachan probably came to see this castle, too" and "Hibachan probably walked down this street too" and "Hibachan probably got ice cream at this Baskin Robbins too" (ok - just kidding on this one - checking to see who is actually still reading this and/or paying attention). |
| At Kumamoto Castle - quite a fortress indeed |
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| Ceiling art... |
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| A little samurai fun... |
Friday morning, we met Shimoda-san at his office, only to learn that he was driving us in his PERSONAL vehicle. And this we only learned when his wife pulled up in the car, got out with her youngest child on her hip, and gave the car to us. What? What? What? We had noooooo idea this was happening. Apparently, his wife was planning to go with us too, but she had a last minute doctor appointment with her son.
We drove through the beautiful countryside to Tamana - bright green rice paddies, mountains in the distance, striking blue skies. When we arrived at the city office, we were met by our new best friend, Nakashima-san, and lead to a small conference room. We spent the next several hours handing over documents to prove a family relationship (the key piece was Hibachan's birth certificate) and receiving 22 pages of koseki (official family registers in Japan, 1 set of "originals" cost 6, 000 JPY). Much of it was written in a very old calligraphy script that they couldn't always read, requiring several times to call in reinforcements to help us figure out what it said. Still we spent about 2 1/2 hours in this small conference room taking notes and trying to trace and then draw the family roots. I asked a few times (over e-mail and in person) about how we might contact the 2 individuals whose names and addresses were written on a letter sent to Uncle Roy, probably about 20-30 years ago. When I got literally no response from either Shimoda-san or Nakashima-san, it (finally) became clear to me that there would be no contacting them or additional information about them. Alas... not likely to make contact with any long-lost living relatives.
Poor kids. It was not even a little bit fun for them after about the first 5 minutes.
Yadomi-mura
It was beyond lunch time and we finally left the office. Not far away at all, Nakashima-san showed us part of the area of Yadomi-mura, which was literally right behind the city office. This was Hibachan's mother's parents' village (her grandparents, Uhachiro and Tsuru Hirata) and was where Take and Waka had stayed when they came to Japan (ca. 1937). Hibachan came to visit Take and Waka here too and was probably where Hibachan had planted rice in the story she told in the video. It was beautiful. |
| Yadomi-mura rice fields - the village of Ethan and Ryan's great-great-great grandparents |
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| Together with Nakashima-san and Shimoda-san |
Later in the day (after a lunch of tonkotsu ramen, a specialty of the Kumamoto area, which Kevin LOVED), we also walked through the old part of the Yadomi-mura. It was a short walk through small, twisty alleyways leading to a "main street" of older quaint buildings. We also met an old lady along the way, selling some type of honey pastry. We chatted with her for a while and she didn't remember a Hirata family in this part of the village... alas.
Searching for the Family Monument in Yokoshima-mura
We had some photos of a family monument, which was believed to be in/near Yokoshima-mura, the home village of Tadaki Murano. From Auntie Take and Suzi, we had received a photograph of the family monument with a written explanation, "Somewhere in Kyushu is a monument to the Murano family. Uncle Fred went. Kikue grandma's family is watching the monument. Uncle George, Uncle Charlie, and Tadaki built this for the Murano family in the mountains." |
| A photograph of the family monument with a post-it note explanation |
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| Stamp on the back of the photograph showing that it was mail received as a "detained alien." |
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| Photo of Uncle Fred at the family monument (others pictured are unknown) |
We were told that Yokoshima is quite a large area, but we had no more details with which to focus our search. So, armed with a photograph, 2 little boys who like treasure hunts, and a lot of optimism, we headed to the main Yokoshima cemetery.
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| On the hunt... saw snakes, spiders, and LOTS of mosquitoes.... |
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| On the search... |
On the search, we saw snakes, spiders, and LOTS of mosquitoes, but sadly, no monument that looked like our photo. In the older section of the cemetery, we did see many a crumbling monument in various states of disrepair. Since the Murano monument was built by Tadaki and his brothers, we assume he was at least 20 when he built it. This means it was likely built around 1915 - or about 100 years ago. Even in the photo with Uncle Fred (maybe in the 1960's or 1970's), the monument had clearly aged a lot, so it's not too surprising that it might not exist anymore. At least, we tried.
Highlights from the Family Research
Getting the family kosekis feels like our biggest accomplishment of the trip. We are having the kosekis professionally translated, so that more of the information will be accessible to other family members, but here are some of the highlights and the stories that we want to capture for Ethan and Ryan.
- Hibachan had told us in the video that her father, Tadaki Murano, basically had an arranged marriage to a Japanese girl living in Japan, but unfortunately she did not pass the health inspection to get into the U.S. So, her younger sister offered to come as Tadaki's wife instead, though according to Hibachan there had been concerns that the sister was too young.
- This was at least partially confirmed in the koseki with a marriage between Tadaki Murano and Masue Masunaga lasting 3 weeks (married Dec 25 1920- divorced Jan 15, 1921). Two weeks later, Tadaki Murano married Kikue Hirata on Jan 30, 1921. It is unclear if Masue and Kikue were actually sisters as they seemed to have different maiden names.
- The koseki actually includes Hibachan (as Ayako) and the second sister, Masako, even though they were both born in the US. When we asked about that, we were told that the births were recorded on the home village koseki via the Japanese consulate in San Francisco. Though.... children #3-12 never made it onto the koseki. Not sure if that's because they knew by that point that they didn't intend to return to the Japan (though this was about 15 years before the war) or if they just gave up after child #2. Sorry Roy, Shizuko, Take, Fred, Waka, Yasuko, Kyoko, Yoshiaki, and Kat.
- "Youshi" also appeared in the koseki, which is a form of "adoption" when a child, usually a son, is "given" to a childless family member such as a cousin to carry on the family name. This happened to Masazo Ueda, one of the brothers of Kiyo Ueda (the mother of Tadaki Murano). According to the koseki, he was "given" to the Shikae family on April 1, 1898 and his first name was changed to Hiroshi. It seems that he then came back to/rejoined the Ueda family but kept his new first name of Hiroshi but changed his last name back to Ueda.
- Hibachan also told us in the video that she had had dual citizenship. As tensions grew between Japan and the U.S., Hibachan was still in Japan and was required to choose one nationality. Her parents and siblings were all in the US, thus she chose US citizenship. She was on (one of) the last boat out of Japan to the U.S.
- She also talked about the principal of her Oekotojogakkou school; the principal was named Junko which is how Jean got her middle name of Junko.
Per Kevin, being able to see the rice field of Yadomi-mura that my grandmother talked about, exploring the small streets where my grandmother likely visited, and searching for my great-grandfather's ohaka in Yokoshima-mura gave me a strong connection to my past which I will remember for a long time.
