[/floatr]This article appeared in 2000 when Kazue Katz passed away. Born Kazue Nagai, she married Air Force cryptographer Frederick H. Katz in 1946 and is believed to have been the first war bride. It took Katz "29 endorsements from Army officials, right up to Gen. Douglas MacArthur" before they could get married. In spite of the obstacles, some 46,000 Japanese brides emigrated to the US with their American husbands in the years up to 1964. There is a mention of an article by Caroline Chung Simpson and she quotes a Saturday Evening Post piece which warned of problems ahead for the brides: "Pointing out that 'there are very few highly educated women and virtually no representatives of important Japanese families', the authors describe the Japanese war brides as 'all sorts of people,' an indeterminate source of future troubles. They are repeatedly depicted as naïve young girls fumbling through the Red Cross classes in cooking and cleaning because they lack the sophistication and aplomb to navigate the rigors of middle-class white suburban domesticity. They are sophomoric 'youngsters' who 'think having their sleek black hair frizzled into dulled mops' makes them American women. The Japanese war brides are 'women stepping into terra incognita,' and the implied risk to the nation is their invasion and disruption of the imagined space of white middle-class domesticity"
The article also revealed to me that the ending of James Michener's book "Sayonara" is significantly different from the film version. There is a much lengthier account of a Japanese war bride by Debbie Storr here. Storr isn't a compelling writer but, if you can plough through the sociology, there's an interesting account of her parent's marriage from her mother's perspective. When her father first asked her for a date she "was filled with both apprehension and delight. On the one hand, she knew that her family would not approve of her dating an American, yet Americans intrigued her".
"I wanted to go, but I didn't have any clothes. All I had was my school uniform. It wasn't good enough to go out with an American guy. And my friend said, 'No problem, I will help you.' So I went to her house with my school uniform on and she let me use a real plain white dress with small polka dots on it. She didn't have any shoes to go with it so she let me use these ugly sandals. I waited for him. He came down and it happened to be raining. And when I saw him I chickened out because I was afraid for my mother's sake. I had seen those GIs come to the hotel with all the prostitutes, they were not good girls...I chickened out and told my friend that I didn't have an umbrella and it was raining. I didn't want to go. And he said, 'No problem,' and he left. Then, I'll never forget this, he came back with cheap white rain shoes, rubber ones. And a plastic umbrella. And he also brought a small brown sack. Inside the sack was Jergen's skin lotion, instant coffee, and one lipstick. So I couldn't refuse him anymore."
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