<Begin Segment 16>

TI: Well, the death of your father sort of accelerated things, so you traveled to the United States first. So Tsuchino, tell me...

MF: Well, actually, she got in before me. What had happened, we were actually, when we heard about it, we were up at her home in Fukuoka, okay? And we had to go up there because we had to get her passport, and so she had her passport, fortunately, we'd gotten all that done and stuff like that. And she also had to go ahead and have, she had to have a physical, she had to have an x-ray, so we'd gone to the base and she had her x-rays and stuff like that. And at that time, she had to carry a chest x-ray with her to go through immigration to prove she didn't have TB and stuff like that. So we'd had all that done, fortunately, at the time. And then what had happened, my father died unexpectedly, and they sent the military police out there because they knew where we were because we had to tell them down at Okino where we were going? And so the base down here, the base at Itazuki, and then the MPs (came) out, picked me up and brought me back to the chaplain where he told me that. So we were, we had accelerated, fortunately we were in a position where we had everything we needed, otherwise I'd have to go and she'd have to stay there. And so, of course, we didn't have enough money saved at the time on the thing, so her brother paid for her trip. So I left on air out of Itazuki, and she left and she went to Tokyo. Of course, I went to Tokyo but then... and she came back on JAL. So she took a JAL flight, she went from Tokyo to Anchorage to Seattle and she was supposed to take a flight from Seattle to New York, but the plane was late getting in, so she missed her flight, so she had to stay overnight.

TI: Oh, so she had a layover.

MF: Yeah, and then she took a flight to New York. And basically she was in a least a day ahead of me.

TI: Because you went military.

MF: Three days. [Laughs]

TI: And the thought was when you heard of your father's death that both of you would attend the service?

MF: Yeah.

TI: So tell the story about how when she arrived to New York, who greeted her.

MF: Well, basically, of course, the family... well, she was worried because they knew she was coming at a certain time, and she missed the flight. Well, she didn't know if anybody would be there because she didn't come. Well, of course, the Red Cross, who was taking care of things, they notified my family and they kept track of where she was. And when she got there, she was greeted by my relatives, plus my uncle Martin who had married the German girl. And so they meet the plane. Of course, at that time, it was quite a bit different, you're up and you're on the tarmac and you walk across the (tarmac) and went to the terminal, and they saw her, and of course they asked her who she was, and she said yes and she almost collapsed. My uncle Martin grabbed her.

TI: Because she was just so relieved?

MF: Oh, yeah. She thought she'd get there and no one was there, then what am I gonna do?

TI: That's a good story.

MF: But the fact that she had the strength to do that all by herself was amazing.

TI: And what was the reaction of your family?

MF: Well, of course, the first thing they did is they took her to the funeral parlor. They didn't even take her home, they took her to the funeral parlor. And of course, then they started introducing her around and stuff like that, my mother was there and my grandmother and stuff like that. And of course, the Japanese, you introduce, you bow and stuff like this. And so my grandmother's watching this, of course. Irish people don't bow, they tend to be rebellious. And so she told Tsuchino, "Stop that (bowing) and come over here and sit next to me," and that was kind of when it broke the ice.

TI: And this was the grandmother who told you...

MF: "Don't bring back a Japanese..." because I only had grandparents on one side because my mother's had died when she was young.

TI: And so for your grandmother to have her sit next to her, that was...

MF: Acceptance.

TI: Acceptance, to show the rest of the family that she accepted her. That was nice.

MF: Then they became good buddies, they'd do drinking. She told me that when... we stayed with my grandma for a while, later on, I was going to go to Columbia and I had to come down early, so had to place to live so we stayed with her. And Tsuchino said my grandmother said to her, she says, "If you're going to be married to an Irishman, you're gonna have to learn how to drink. So they were drinking Brandy Alexanders when I come home. [Laughs]

TI: That's a good story. So it sounded like your grandmother enjoyed Tsuchino.

MF: Oh, yeah, they got along great.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2016 Densho. All Rights Reserved.