Imprisoned Apart: The World War II Correspondence of an Issei Couple

1. Establishing Roots

IONE ; I Establishing Roots Island soul ofme Cast off to cross the ocean Ah, the world is big! -lssa1 O N A DRIZZLY LATE summer morning in 1919, the passenger freighter 5.5. Suwa Maru nudged its hull against the pilings ofa familiar berth at the Great Northern Railway pier in Seatde's Elliott Bay, bringing a collection of people and cargo from Asia. The ship, one of four Britishbuilt vessels owned by the NYK (Nippon Yusen Kaisha) shipping line, was completing the North American leg of the company's twenty-five-yearold route between Seatde and the Asian Pacific. Shordy after the lines were secured, a first-class passenger, Dr. Toma Inoue of Tokyo, appeared on deck attired in a deep blue-black silk kimono with "a touch of white at the throat." One of 500 licensed female physicians inJapan, Dr. Inoue had received her training in Western medicine, with a specialty in internal medicine and diseases of children. She was en route to New York at the invitation of the international YWCA to attend a conference on education in health and social morality. Following an interview with the press, the assistant manager of NYK escorted her off the ship for a tour of the city; his instructions from his superiors were to attend to her welfare during her twenty-four-hour stay in Seatde.2 The ship's passenger list recorded this as her sixth journey to America.3 3 Among the 325 other passengers on board (233 ofthemJapanese subjects ) were twenty-seven-year-old Iwao Matsushita and Hanaye Tamura Matsushita, his twenty-one-year-old bride of seven months. They had boarded ship at Yokohama, the last ofseveral scheduled stops prior to the Pacific crossing. Although the majority of the Japanese passengers were returning to the United States, the Matsushitas, having booked one-way passage, were traveling abroad for the first time. They planned to make Seatde their home for as long as five years. The year 1919 saw 10,064 Japanese immigrant arrivals in America,4 many ofthem came as sojourners with dreams ofaccumulating wealth to take back to the homeland for a better life. The Matsushitas also arrived with dreams ofriches, but they sought a wealth ofa different kind. Iwao's passport bore a student visa,5 which gave him entree to a culture that would enable him to pursue fluency in the English language, to acquire familiarity with its literature, and, he believed, "to become a better man."6 Iwao Matsushita was born on January 10, 1892, in Miike, Hiroshimaken (Hiroshima prefecture), on the island ofHonshu.7 He was the second son and third offive children ofIsao and Hana Matsushita. A sister, Toku, and a brother, Sekio, were four and two years older. Sisters, Tonomi and Fumi, followed three and five years later. The Matsushita family members were among a minuscule group of people practicing the Protestant faith inJapan at that time. Earlier, following the Meiji Restoration, Methodist missionaries had converted the elder Matsushita to Christianity; he later became a proselytizer.8 Isao Matsushita's superiors sent him to engage in mission work in Tonomi, a small fishing village near the seaport town ofMitajiri. Immediately , the Matsushitas became a curiosity to the non-Christian villagers, a curiosity that quickly turned on the newcomers and led to persecution ofthe children. Spreading the word ofChrist among a Buddhist majority proved burdensome enough for Isao, but the lives of the Matsushita children became unbearable after the parents enrolled the two eldest children in the primary school. Years later, as an adult, Toku revealed in her diary the story of her early persecution at the school: A few days after our arrival [at] Tonomi, father took me to the primary 4 school for admission. The teachers and children received us with looks ofsurprise. Many children at once crowded around and stared at us very wonderfully as ifwe Christians were visitors from a distant foreign country or rather something not human. Though I was able to pass my first day at the school without suffering any mischiefbecause my father was with me, some mischievous boys would not let any other day pass without teasing me in some way or other. The very next day, some boys came near me and by turns pulled my hanging braided hair crying, "Why did you Christians come to this village? What did your family come here for? We guess you've...