Japanese translator making more WWII artifact connections
By Brian Bergstein/AP
Reaching back into history to find the original owner of a Japanese World War II artifact is no easy task. But it’s quickly becoming a hobby for one Silicon Valley woman.
Mickie Grace recently helped an American man return the belongings of a kamikaze pilot who died while attacking the USS Bunker Hill aircraft carrier in 1945. The American’s grandfather had grabbed the items from the pilot’s body and stashed them in a garage for 55 years.
Grace, a Japanese American who works as a translator, used a few clues about the items to figure out the kamikaze pilot’s identity. She tracked down his relatives in Japan, who tearfully and gratefully accepted the belongings in a San Francisco restaurant in March.
After reading an Associated Press story about the kamikaze reunion, San Jose firefighter Michael Ramos decided to return a Japanese sword that had been sitting in his closet for more than 20 years. The sword was passed down from his step-grandfather, but Ramos doesn’t know where it came from.
“It made me feel like, ‘Hey, I bet there’s a Japanese family somewhere that would love to get this sword back,’” Ramos, 40, said from his home in Hollister.
Ramos called Grace. A strip of cloth attached to the sword had the name and address of its owner, a Japanese officer named Kindayu Kogure. Grace quickly found that the officer had passed away, but his family still lives at the same address — a 500-year-old hotel-spa they own in the Gumma Prefecture.
Grace plans to take the sword to Japan on Sunday and deliver it to Kogure’s son, also named Kindayu. Grace said the family is delighted; the elder Kogure would have been 100 this year.
Other Americans have asked whether Grace would make a similar connection with their Japanese artifacts. So, while she’s in Japan she plans to research military histories she can use in an Internet database that will aid future searches.
“I don’t expect that I would have such luck every time I take the project,” she said. “However, this is going to be my charity work, and I will do my best.” |
