Still Searching for Acceptance

Miwako Cleave awakens early each day and works at a black Singer sewing machine in the spare bedroom. She sews for a couple hours, then tends the vegetable garden that grows alongside the house.

Four times a week, she goes to English class, and by late afternoon, sometimes well into evening, she returns to the Singer. It is old, she says, but sturdy. She focuses on the soft, light fabric beneath her fingers as she feeds it through the machine’s whirring bite. Her thoughts do not wander. She will not let them, and that is the source of her incredible strength.

If she allows her concentration to lose grip, the depth of her fall is immeasurable, back in time to screams and flames, the stench and terror of war--the frigid wind of fear and winter. So she must focus on the present, on tomatoes soon to grow in the garden and pajamas nearly done for a grandson in Tennessee.

The 69-year-old North Hills woman is among the 30,000 Japanese military brides who married American soldiers and moved to the United States during the 1940s and 1950s after immigration laws were changed to allow their entrance. Many were disowned by families when they left Japan, and many have spent their lives searching for acceptance in the United States.

They were universally cast as opportunists, even prostitutes, marrying good, red-blooded American soldiers to escape the ruins of a defeated nation. Once they left, they found themselves caught between countries, unwanted in Japan and unwelcome by many in America.

It was a time when blacks and whites drank from different fountains, sat on opposite ends of the bus. The women wondered, as they arrived, which fountain they should drink from, where on the bus should they sit. Even many Japanese Americans did not embrace them. So where in America did they fit in?

A 1952 article in the Saturday Evening Post stated “. . . the effect of these mixed marriages on American life at home is still to come--the arrival of thousands of dark-eyed brides in Mississippi cotton hamlets and New Jersey factory cities, on Oregon ranches or in Kansas country towns. The thousands are on the way, and their bright-eyed children soon will be knocking on school doors in most of the 48 states. The great question of how they will fit in and whether they generally will be welcomed or shunned remains to be answered.”

Almost half a century later, little has been said of the women, members of the nation’s first large wave of interracial couples, says Regina Lark, who is coordinating an Aug. 26 panel discussion titled “Japanese International Brides: Heritage, Identity, Community and Legacy” at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo.

Most have lived quiet lives struggling to escape the shadow of stereotypes and haunting memories of World War II. The confluence of their disparate lives is manifested in their children and grandchildren, who serve as legacies but who also have inherited complex issues of race.

“I have come to understand these women as absolutely strong and courageous,” said Lark, who researched the topic for her doctoral dissertation and now teaches history at Pasadena City College, Glendale Community College and USC. “You could probably call a lot of them feminists, even though they wouldn’t use that term to describe themselves. They have sought social, political and cultural inclusion into the mainstream. They have sought to challenge their children’s teachers to make sure their children are being taught properly. They have challenged their husbands’ families to include them into the fold.”

Ten years ago, Kazuko Umezu Stout founded the Nikkei International Marriage Society to bring the women together, address stereotypes and help heal deep wounds left by Japanese media, among those who criticized the women when they left Japan.

“It has haunted me for many years,” she said. “I felt we couldn’t die in peace leaving the image the media had created.”

In February 1952, Life magazine ran a James Michener story about a woman named Sachiko Pfeiffer, newly arrived in the United States with her husband, Frank Pfeiffer, describing the discrimination the couple faced in Chicago. Neighbors called Sachiko a “dirty Jap” and left threatening notes. The Pfeiffers moved and found a small home in Melrose Park, Ill., where they were welcomed by neighbors. As a means of introduction, Sachiko sewed dresses for little girls in the neighborhood and delivered them door to door.

The story ended with a quote reflecting a commitment to her new country.

“I gonna die in America,” she said. “This is my home forever.”

And she was right. Sachiko died in September 1994. She was living in the same house in Melrose Park.

Because of the War, She Knew Hardship Early On

More than 50 years later, Miwako Cleave still cannot believe. Her faith, like her childhood, were taken by war.

At 13, she was forced to work in an airplane factory, and, when the factory was bombed, she was sent out with a bucket to salvage scraps of metal. There was little to eat, so she hunted for grasshoppers, silkworms, dandelions and searched beneath rocks for crabs.

“I pray so hard, ‘Please help me,’ ” she said. But the B-29s kept coming and coming and chasing her prayers away. “No God,” she said, “only myself.”

After the war ended and the Yankee soldiers were fighting in Korea, she found something that would change her life. At 19, she ran away to Nagoya, following her heart, to avoid an arranged marriage to a stranger. One day as she was working as a telephone operator in a hospital, she heard that hundreds of American GIs were en route from Korean battlefields.

She helped prepare flowers to brighten their rooms, then each day she made the rounds to tend to them. One of the patients was Robert Cleave, the son of mill workers in North Carolina, who was suffering from a kidney infection.

During the next five years, love saved her, as once again she followed her heart--this time to America. When she told her parents she was getting married and leaving Japan, her father told her that she was forsaking family honor.

“You are 24 years old,” he said in Japanese. “We cannot stop you, but if you leave this house, never come back.”

Her mother cried. “If you marry Bob san, what will you do in America? Skin color different, eyes different, hair different. What will you do if he throws you away?”

Miwako told her she didn’t care. “I’ll take care of myself one way or another.”

Cousins tossed rocks at her. An uncle removed her name from the family tree. “To them,” she said, “I was dead.”

In 1955, they were married in the U.S. Embassy, and as she and her husband were preparing to leave Japan, a government official reviewed her papers. As he handed them back to her he said in Japanese, “Leave, we don’t want you.”

And so she did.

When Robert wrote home to his mother to inform her of his marriage, she wrote back, and one sentence burned in his memory. “You have to think about what your children will look like.”

His parents were opposed to the marriage until they met Miwako. Upon their arrival, Robert’s mother gave her new daughter-in-law a wedding shower. Nearly every woman in town showed up. They brought their husbands, who were curious to see a Japanese person. So many people came, many of them had to stand outside the house.

Robert remained in the Air Force for 20 years, and they moved around the country with each new assignment. In 1957, their daughter, Candida, was born. For Miwako, her bearings in America were suddenly clear. Her identity became certain, and she suddenly understood who she was: She was the mother of an American child.

When their daughter was 4, they returned to Japan to introduce her to Miwako’s parents. Miwako wasn’t welcome in her small hometown, so they met at her brother’s house in Tokyo.

“She doesn’t look Japanese,” Miwako’s mother said. “She doesn’t look like American either. That’s OK.”

Near the end of Robert’s 20-year military career, they moved to North Hills. In 1965, Miwako got a job earning $1.22 an hour doing piece work for Olga Co., a lingerie manufacturer. By the time she retired in 1997, she was a senior designer. Robert went to college, eventually earning a doctorate from UCLA in ancient history.

He teaches at Cal State Northridge and College of the Canyons in Valencia. He and Miwako will celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary this year.

For Miwako, life was changed by love--first for a man, then for a daughter and grandchildren. Even now, she focuses on her love of sewing, for feeling the richness of the land in her hands as she works in the garden.

“I’ve never regretted coming to America,” she said. “I think I did a great thing.”

Hoping to Make Peace With Family Back Home

After living four decades in the same house in Junction City, Kan., Setsuko Takechi Perry, 70, now lives with her daughter, Rika Houston, in West Los Angeles. Four grandchildren keep her busy, she said, leaving little time to mourn the past.

She has buried two American husbands, both of them, she said, good men. In 1990, she returned to Japan for the first time since leaving in 1956. She visited her three sisters, hoping to make peace. It was a nice visit, she said, but peace does not come quickly after so much time, so much pain.

She visited the island of Shikoku, where she grew up, and everything had changed, rebuilt after the war. She could no longer recognize what was stored in her memory. She couldn’t even find the river.

It was called Ookawa, Big River, where she would hold a lantern for a childhood friend as he stood in the clear water and swept up fish in a net.

She remembers once during the war when sirens sounded and B-29s flew overhead. Her father picked her up and carried her on his back, covering her with a futon to protect her from flames bursting from fire bombs as they fled toward an underground shelter. It was the first time in her memory that she and her father had touched.

They ran past the big river, and it was filled with charred bodies of those who had flung themselves into the water to soothe burns from the flames and heat. She remembers peering from beneath the futon and seeing smoke rise from the bodies. Something inside of her died.

“Live, die--I don’t care,” she said. “Only lucky people left alive.”

She was among the lucky, but her father was not. When the war was over, he was a man broken by his country’s defeat, by the loss of land that had been in his family for centuries, by the cancer that was killing his wife.

Setsuko walked into her house one day in 1953 and discovered him hanging from the ceiling. For him and many others, the war never ended.

She had met Lemo Houston, an American soldier from Alabama, in 1945, when she was 15. He went home to the United States but reenlisted in the military and returned to Japan during the Korean War.

Nine years after they met, he asked Setsuko to marry him and accompany him to America, but she said she could not leave her sick mother. Then, 30 days after her father’s suicide, Setsuko’s mother died in her arms.

With her town destroyed, her parents dead, Setsuko agreed to marry this quiet, gentle man. That he was African American made the marriage even more unacceptable to Setsuko’s three sisters, who virtually erased her from their lives.

It took six months for Setsuko’s background to be checked, a requirement for passage to the states ensuring that she had no Communist ties, no diseases or moral digressions. As they awaited approval, Lemo told Setsuko that he wanted to adopt a son.

He was fond of children and had met a boy at an orphanage whose skin was darker than that of the other children. His name was Joji. He was kept in a closet and not allowed to play with the others.

Initially, Setsuko was opposed to adoption, but after seeing how the children were treated and discovering that food donated by soldiers was being sold on the black market, she pushed the adoption through herself.

They arrived in the States a family and settled in Junction City, Kan., near a military base, where there were hundreds of other Japanese military brides.

“At first, they call us Japs,” she said of the townspeople. “They never seen Japanese people before. Some people see us in town, and they stand up and look, look, look to see me better.”

Even among the other Japanese women married to soldiers, those married to African American GIs were looked down upon.

They had two daughters, Rika and Velina. Joji, who was renamed George Adam Houston, had a difficult time adjusting in Kansas. He started running away from home during his teenage years.

Life was made more difficult by Lemo’s drinking. He was never able to leave the war behind. In his final days, he would express sadness at the killing in Vietnam. War and violence were never part of his nature, and in the end they seemed to destroy him.

He died in 1970, and Setsuko eventually remarried. Her second husband died in 1993. By then, both her daughters were in the Los Angeles area. She hadn’t seen her son in nearly 10 years and wondered if he was still alive.

When her parents died in Japan, she saw her future in the United States, and when her second husband died, there seemed little reason to remain in Kansas. Again, she packed and left the past behind.

There Were Sacrifices--and Lots of Racism

For the future of her children, Setsuko said her lifetime of sacrifices seem small. She stressed education, and Rika Houston is now a business professor at Cal State Los Angeles. Velina Hasu Houston is resident playwright, associate professor and director of the playwriting program at the USC School of Theatre. Both have doctorate degrees.

Velina’s signature play, “Tea,” was about her mother’s small circle of friends in Junction City.

“I watched my mother experience a lot of racism there [in Kansas], Velina said. “I can’t tell you how many times I heard her called ‘a Jap.’ ”

She knew from the time she was young that she wanted to write and she wanted to leave Junction City. Because of its proximity to Fort Riley, there was an international component to the small town that she relished, but diversity sometimes resulted in ugly confrontation.

One day while walking with a friend, they were attacked by two girls. Velina was wearing her hair in two long pony tails. One of the assailants took a knife and sliced one of them off.

Experience Has Made Her ‘a Very Political Person’

Velina attended Kansas State University to remain close to her mother, but after Setsuko remarried, Velina headed west and earned a master of fine arts degree from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. She recently received her PhD in critical studies from USC’s School of Cinema.

Much of her work addresses the complex, painful issues of race, the result of personal life experiences.

“It made me a very political person,” she said. “I could never just walk out the door and just be. It was always, ‘What are you and where are you from and where are you aligned politically? The tension is always there. . . . One of the favorite questions is, ‘Do you feel more black or Japanese?’ So I say, ‘Is the color violet more red or more blue?’ I’m not red, I’m not blue. I don’t feel more red or blue on any given day. I always just feel violet.”

A single parent of two children, ages 13 and 3, she lives in Santa Monica within 15 minutes of her sister’s family and her mother. Last spring, the family became whole again with George’s reappearance after 15 years.

He had gone to the house in Junction City searching for his mother. The new residents said she was gone, and for a brief moment he thought she had died. When it was explained that she had moved to California, he tracked the family down.

He first found Rika. She and Velina told their mother that George was back, but she refused to see him. Then, about 15 minutes later, she walked into the room. She had changed clothes. George hugged her, but Setsuko stood stiffly. She looked at him and said, “If I passed you on the street, I wouldn’t recognize you. Your hair is gone.”

“After 15 years, that’s what you have to say to me?” he asked.

They spoke superficially, uncomfortably, then Setsuko said, “Do you remember the watch that you gave me?” It was a Mother’s Day gift George had given her when he was a child.

He said that he remembered.

“Sometimes I wind it up, and I think to myself that if it’s still ticking, then wherever you are, you’re OK.”

The next night they had dinner at a restaurant in Koreatown, and Setsuko pulled back her sleeve to show her son. She was wearing the watch.

Because of the rejection of Setsuko’s sisters, Velina said, her mother understands how families should love and forgive. The watch was her way of doing both.

Velina has written a play about her brother titled “Waiting for Tadashi.” It will be produced in New Jersey. She also has written a play titled “Ikebana: Living Flowers,” which is about two women in 1950s Japan who, through friendship, find liberation from their individual forms of imprisonment. It opens in September at the Pasadena Playhouse.

The legacy of her mother and other Japanese military brides, Velina said, is that they drew two nations closer together at a very grass-roots level. Her African American relatives, she said, are more accepting toward those of Japanese ancestry because of Setsuko.

The military brides see family and love in a different light, one without boundaries of governments or color. They followed their hearts across political, ethnic and social lines.

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Duane Noriyuki can be reached at socalliving@latimes.com.