Meguriai
Nobuko's American Journey
by
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Sporadic air raids on Tokyo began in 1944, mostly on major train stations and airfields. I had to go through Shinjuku, a major train station, to get to my college. Worried about my safety, my mother put me in the dormitory. One Sunday, I was walking along the cabbage fields after a week-end visit with my family, laden with some hard-to-get food in my backpack. The wailing air-raid siren rang out, and a few minutes later, I heard the familier rumbling drone of the B-29s. I could see the specks in the sky growing larger and larger. P-51 fighter planes were escorting the bombers on the way to do damage to the Tachikawa Air Base, which was near my college. In my naïve young mind, the bombs would fall where the bombers intended. Since I was several miles away from the air base, I thought I would be safe. Besides, I was just a
harmless young woman who carried no weapon of destruction. Who would want to harm me? So, I kept walking. Suddenly one of the escorting planes descended low enouth for me to make out a figure inside the cockpit. He getan to shoot at me. Rat-a-tat-tat! I jumped in a vegetable patch holding my head, prostrate. My face touched the ground, and I could smell the earth. I held my breath.
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About the Book
Meguriai" in Japanese means "chance meeting." "Meguriai Nobuko's American Journey" is about a Japanese girl named Nobuko who dreamed of studying in America just as her father had done in the early 20th century. Nobuko was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1927 to a U.S. educated father and at that time un-commonly free-thinking mother. After seeing smiling faces in old photos of her father's American friends in Ohio, she wanted to visit this magical country called America when she grew up. Nobuko majored in English to prepare herself for the life in America. The World War II was not in her equation! Nobuko personally experienced the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo, but her dream ot going to America never wavered. To create friendship between the victor and the vanquished, the leaders of the U.S. occupation forces created a joint Messiah Chorus and called out to the universities in Tokyo. Nobuko and several of her friends at her college signed up hoping for the opportunity to practice English! The choral group made up of 200 American and Japanese people, performed at the Hibiya Performance Hall accompanied by the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra on Christmas Day, 1945, four months after the war ended. The romance between Nobuko in the alto section and Earle in the base section blossomed and eventually led to their marriage in 1947. A year later they moved to Champaign, Illinois."Nobuko's American Journey" is about how Nobuko learned to cope with the very different culture and values and to raise her bi-racial childen.