The Japanese Women Who Married The Enemy

The Japanese Women Who Married The Enemy
By Vanessa Barford
BBC News, Washington DC

Seventy years ago many Japanese people in occupied Tokyo after World War Two saw US troops as the enemy. But tens of thousands of young Japanese women married GIs nonetheless - and then faced a big struggle to find their place in the US.
For 21-year-old Hiroko Tolbert, meeting her husband's parents for the first time after she had travelled to America in 1951 was a chance to make a good impression.
She picked her favourite kimono for the train journey to upstate New York, where she had heard everyone had beautiful clothes and beautiful homes.
But rather than being impressed, the family was horrified.
"My in-laws wanted me to change. They wanted me in Western clothes. So did my husband. So I went upstairs and put on something else, and the kimono was put away for many years," she says.

It was the first of many lessons that American life was not what she had imagined it to be.
"I realised I was going to live on a chicken farm, with chicken coops and manure everywhere. Nobody removed their shoes in the house. In Japanese homes we didn't wear shoes, everything was very clean - I was devastated to live in these conditions," she says.
"They also gave me a new name - Susie."
Like many Japanese war brides, Hiroko had come from a fairly wealthy family, but could not see a future in a flattened Tokyo.
"Everything was crumbled as a result of the US bombing. You couldn't find streets, or stores, it was a nightmare. We were struggling for food and lodging.
"I didn't know very much about Bill, his background or family, but I took a chance when he asked me to marry him. I couldn't live there, I had to get out to survive," she says.
Hiroko's decision to marry American GI Samuel "Bill" Tolbert didn't go down well with her relatives.

"My mother and brother were devastated I was marrying an American. My mother was the only one that came to see me when I left. I thought, 'That's it, I'm not going to see Japan again,'" she says.
Her husband's family also warned her that people would treat her differently in the US because Japan was the former enemy.
More than 110,000 Japanese-Americans on the US West Coast had been put into internment camps in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attacks in 1941 - when more than 2,400 Americans were killed in one day.
It was the largest official forced relocation in US history, prompted by the fear that members of the community might act as spies or collaborators and help the Japanese launch further attacks.

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