Keno in Reno (5:28)

Kazuko Watanabe Jordan

Kazue Jordan – born Kazue Shibata – was a jitterbugging bobby-soxer who danced nights away with black GIs at a cabaret in Yokohama. She married one of those soldiers, Sidney Jordan, and accompanied him to the United States. Her California life, cleaning houses for the rich and famous, was a kind of immigrant success story. But she also lived in a smaller universe of Japanese women who married black GIs in the aftermath of World War II and had to negotiate an especially difficult racial and cultural divide.