Japanese War Brides: An Oral History Archive
Stories from across the United States as told to a daughter of a war bride
She was late for work on August 6, 1945, and for that reason, she survived. Ten years later, a master sergeant in the U.S. Army boldly sought her hand in marriage, taking her from Hiroshima to a life as the wife of a military man, and then to a farm in southern Indiana.
The Japanese women who came with their American husbands to northwest Montana in the 1950s and early ’60s were unprepared for its winters, vast empty spaces and, for some, lives as single mothers.
Yoshiko Arakaki said her face got longer and longer the closer they got to her American husband’s home in northern Louisiana. Trees everywhere. It looked to her like they were going to live in the woods. They settled in a small town and had six children. Then one day her husband did not return from hunting.
Yae Chiba waited for a long time for the American who fathered her child to return to Japan or send for her. He never did. Her daughter had a hard time as a mixed-race child in Japan, so Yae was relieved when she met another American who asked her to marry him. It was not a happy marriage, but for many years Yae accepted it as the cost of raising her child in the United States.
Clark ends up in Japan after serving in Korea, and is working at an ammunition depot where he starts courting the daughter of a samurai family, Akiko Matsuda. He is persistent and eventually persuades her to agree to marry him, but her father might be an obstacle.
He was an orphan without relatives. She was far from home, knowing no one in the United States. Together, they made their own rules and created a family with a hybrid of cultures and always laughter.
Yoshiko Hirate, a fun-loving young woman, married Zenas McClung, a strict southern Baptist from West Virginia. She said that after it became known she was dating an American, no Japanese man would have her.
For all their differences, it was a good marriage, until tragedy struck.
Reiko Teshima got a job as a telephone operator for the Americans, learning how to say “Number please,” and “Have you finished, Sir?” And that’s how she met John Van Gelder of Bath, N.Y. Today she believes that her problems with the English language made her seem more critical than she intended. She and her daughter Susan talk about language and relationships.
Angelo Amato, an 18-year-old GI from East Boston, was among the first US troops to arrive in Japan following Emperor Hirohito’s surrender in August 1945. In time, he would meet the girl he would marry — Kimiko Yamaguchi — and bring her home. But to get around the immigration laws of the day would require help from his congressman, a young political up-and-comer named John F. Kennedy.
Chizuko Murata met Clifford Watkins in 1946 in Japan. He was the first black man she had ever seen, and she married him two years later.