NORTHRIDGE : Ex-Marine Gets Fond Farewell From Japanese

Fifty years ago, Fred Nathanson fought as a Marine against the Japanese in the South Pacific, in some of the bloodiest battles of World War II.

Last month, Nathanson lay dying at a hospital in Kyoto, Japan, dependent for his every need on doctors there.

Nathanson’s widow, Gloria Nathanson, says she has come home from a vacation-turned-ordeal with renewed confidence in the potential for people of different cultures to understand and love one another.

“I expected to be treated as what I was, a foreigner,” Nathanson, 64, said. “Instead, it was like I was part of their family. They were so caring and so generous.”

The Nathansons arrived in Japan on Nov. 15 for what was to have been a one-week stay. While lunching with Korean friends in Kyoto on the sixth day, Fred Nathanson suffered a stroke from which he was not to recover.

The retired Marine sergeant was rushed to a tiny hospital in the downtown area of the ancient city. There, Gloria Nathanson found herself desperately trying to communicate with doctors and nurses, not one of whom seemed to speak a word of English. Her companions, the wife of an English-speaking Korean friend who had just left Japan and her sister, also spoke very little English.

Enter Dr. Fujita, a young physician who had spent a year in the United States at age 16 and who spoke fairly fluent English. He became her unofficial translator for the next 10 days.

“He was absolutely wonderful to me,” Nathanson recalled. “He was just there with me all the time. Whenever the doctors had to explain something to me, he would appear as if by magic.”

Fred Nathanson’s condition declined until his death at age 69 on Nov. 30. His wife, a retired former associate director of admissions for UCLA, is convinced that doctors and nurses at the hospital did everything that could possibly have been done for her husband.

She said she will always remember the kindness of the medical staff. Like the first evening, when Dr. Fujita brought her a McDonald’s bag containing a hamburger, french fries, a large Coke and an apple pie. Or that her husband’s attending physician, Dr. Ikeno, seemed to work 24 hours a day. Or the nurses who assembled at the foot of her husband’s bed, crying, on the day he died.

At her husband’s Dec. 6 funeral, at which he was buried with full military honors at El Toro Marine base, a close family friend read a poem that Gloria Nathanson had composed about the full circle that her husband had traveled in his experiences with the Japanese. The poem ended:

“Peace, harmony, love.

We know each other.”