October 25, 2006
To my uncle Douglas
To me, you were part of my familys mythology. I learned only that you had vanished during the war while defending your men. There was never word from the government regarding your fate, and so your parents and your sister began the long, sad period of waiting, hoping, and fearing.
When I asked questions as a child, I was finally told of someone else in this myth. A young American-born Japanese woman named Grace Iijima, who wrote your mother after you disappeared, asking if she could visit to pay her respects. This being 1951 in Kentucky, so soon after the Second World War, it was not necessarily a safe trip for her to make and she had no idea if shed be welcomed or reviled.
The truth was somewhere in between, and she was met cordially but with unease. The specter of miscegenation was anathema to a good Southern family, and yet there she was bearing a portrait of you, painted from a photo by a famed Japanese artisan, and an exquisite silver bracelet for your younger sister, my mother. Clearly there was a level of connection that was very deep, and as you had a fiancé when you left for Japan, her appearance brought up questions that no one dared ask. She knew this, and she played the game. Grace attended church with your family. She expressed her great respect for you in the most civil and proper manner. No one had the courage to ask anything more, and she left.
Your mother and your father died still wondering if you had been imprisoned and might somehow still be alive. A few of your fellow officers had cryptically expressed doubts that you were, but only clandestinely and with an obvious fear of official reprimand for discussing the matter with your family. Parents being what they are, your mother remained uncertain, or perhaps unwilling to believe you were really dead.
And that myth, those tales, were all I knew of you, aside from that photo of the handsome blonde soldier. Little was mentioned of the subject, and the impression given to me as a child was that the issue was at rest. Until a few years ago.
At that time, I found a list on my mothers desk of men killed in action in Korea. Though she hadnt said anything, I realized she was still looking for you, still trying to find answers, still worried. And so I decided to help.
Through the Korean War Project I was able to reach Larry Powers, who confirmed what your friends had tried to tell your parents so long ago: you had been killed on the day you disappeared, and your body had been spotted in a mass grave in territory that was subsequently lost and recaptured several times, obscuring your resting place. He sent us a photo of you at a party with him, convincing us that you had indeed known him at Camp Wood.
The information had been there all along, but the government had been unable to tell us what I discovered with a few days of work on the internet. It was hard to believe, but there it was.
Your sister and your brother were both saddened and relieved to hear the news that you had died soon after your disappearance and had not been captured, tortured, or locked away for years on end. But of course, the news brought back old pain and memories, and some of them invited investigation.
I thought often of the young Japanese woman who had come to far and to such a difficult environment to pay her respects to your family. She had cared. She would have wanted to know what we had discovered and so, we looked for her. Through hard work and some strokes of luck, we found her living only a few miles from us in Manhattan.
(I say strokes of luck, but in fact it was her accomplishments at the UN that made it possible to find her. Had she been a less exceptional person, the search might have been fruitless.)
Before involving the rest of your family, I met with her personally to make sure that she was someone who wouldnt bring invective or cruelty to your sister and brother. I had no idea what type of person she really was. But when I met her, I realized there was no need for me to be concerned.
Clearly intelligent and accomplished, she described you with intimate detail. How you introduced yourself to her at a dance at Camp Wood. How you and she traveled through Japan together. How when you were sent to Korea, you wrote telling her how cold it was, and she arranged with great effort to have long underwear sent to you from an Abercrombie and Fitch outpost in South America. And how, when you vanished, his friends gave some of your effects to her. Without my asking, she denied a romantic relationship. I didnt believe her, and I only wish I had told her then that there was no need to keep secrets from us anyone who was kind to you during that terrible time was a blessing to our family, not an embarrassment. It pained me to learn she had never married, and I began to develop a sinking feeling that your disappearance had broken her heart more deeply than any of us could have imagined.
I told her what wed learned, and I think she felt some relief to know you hadnt been tormented as a prisoner. She told me shed had dreams of you calling out to her for years after you vanished. I began to think of this poor lonely young woman, her heart broken, wondering if you were alive and suffering somewhere where she couldnt reach you and how she had no one to talk to, not even his family, because it would have been too much of a scandal in those days. How many years did she spend with that immense, quiet grief never marrying, always wondering.
We met one more time with your sister, and Grace saw the portrait of you shed had made 50 years ago. She asked for your photo, and we had a copy made from her. We tried to stay in touch, but she kept her distance.
After her death, her friends approached us and told me what I had already guessed that she was deeply in love with you, and you with her. She couldnt or wouldnt tell us this while she was alive, for whatever reasons.
And so, the myths about you changed but they were more poignant than ever. And now, though Ive never met you, my feelings for you and Grace are much stronger than they are for other relatives Ive seen just a few years ago.
I suppose it is a human vanity to fill in the gaps in such a story, and a conceit to think I really knew either of you. With the information I have, a million different accounts could still fit the same facts. When I think about how things might have been different if youd survived, I try to keep my sentiments in check.
Perhaps you werent really in love with her. Perhaps if youd lived, youd be another one of those relatives Im cordial to a few times a year, but not really friendly with. Perhaps youd want nothing to do with me because of my personal life. Perhaps all this feeling I have for you and that poor woman comes from a self-indulgent romantic fantasy that had little to do with reality at all.
Perhaps. But given the choice, I prefer to believe a different connection between the facts. Maybe you did love her, deeply. Maybe if youd lived, you might have come to New York with Grace. We might be close. I might have come to you for advice. I might have cousins that I love dearly. You might have been a joy and a blessing to all of us if that damn war hadnt taken you, and broken so many hearts.
And so, though I dont deserve to say it, I will: I love you. I miss you. I wish, how I wish I could have helped you. Helped you both, helped you all.
With love,
Whit