Peter Westbrook (centre)
Reading "By The Sword" by Richard Cohen, I came across an account of one of America's leading fencers, Peter Westbrook. Westbrook's father, Ulysses, was a GI in the Korean war and his mother, Mariko, a Japanese war bride. This is from the book (no link):
"Westbrook was born in 1952 to a mixed race couple living in the Hayes Homes housing project in Newark...The young Westbrook's memories are of his father putting out cigarettes on his mother's face; his mother on the floor, her leg bleeding. Ulysses left for good when Peter was six...A life in the projects was not what Mariko Westbrook wanted for her son and she was soon mapping out his escape...By the time he was fourteen, Peter had started to fence 'My mother could trace her lineage back through many samurai. This was a source of great honour, great pride...She thought, if I get Peter fencing, he'll meet noble people'"
Mariko Wada was the daughter of a wealthy govenment official in Kobe and was disowned by her family when she married Westbrook. She is some woman, I thought. A Google search then turned up this 1996 story:
Nearly three years ago, Mariko Westbrook was riding a Newark bus when she was severely beaten and kicked by a woman who took offense at something she said. Ms. Westbrook, 66, the mother of Peter Westbrook, an Olympic fencing champion, died four days later. Until August, police were unable to locate Ms. Westbrook's attacker. But information provided by a passenger eventually led them to Fanny Simmons, 31, of Newark, who pleaded guilty last month to aggravated manslaughter charges. Yesterday, a Superior Court judge sentenced Ms. Simmons to 16 years in prison, the Essex County Prosecutor's office said.
