We volunteers at KI occasionally receive requests from descendants of Japanese wartime diaspora looking for kin. To date, we’ve been unsuccessful, most often as, even if located, the kin are reluctant to contact.
Kumanichi has a touching story on Emi Arawa. He was born in New Caledonia in 1939, then under French rule, to a local mother and a Japanese father. Two years later, winds of war ripped the family apart - his mother died, and his father vanished into the maelstrom but apparently returned to Japan in 1946. Emi-san himself was sent to a detention center in Australia. After the war and returning to New Caledonia, French priests in care of him burned his documentation to hide his Japanese identity from a revenge-seeking citizenry.
Now 80, Emi-san desires to visit his ancestral tomb. Surviving documents from his internment in Australia indicate his father was named Terada Tatsuji (the documents do not record the kanji), born in 1892 in Kumamoto. In New Caledonia, the father was a baker; perhaps he continued that occupation on return. A French-speaking volunteer from Texan Christian University is accompanying Emi-san on his first visit to Japan to aid in his search. It is a long shot, and the story is quite complicated. That events from that era continue to reverberate is amazing. Kumanichi provides photos and an email address for any with info. - William
