[/floatl]Kyodo via The Japan Times: Miss World Japan looks for U.S. granddadFor 21-year-old Elza Sasaki, Japan's representative for the Miss World contest in December, winning the beauty pageant is...also about generating media exposure to help her find her long-lost American grandfather. Discovering the whereabouts of the former U.S. Air Force officer, who was stationed in Okinawa shortly after the end of the war and would be around 80 if still alive, is a desire that Elza...inherited from her mother Tammy Sasaki, 57. Her mother, who was named after her father's nickname "Tommie," also dreamed of reuniting with her father, who left Japan before she was born, by becoming famous to draw attention to herself. Her efforts were rewarded when she was selected to become a member of the Japanese women's basketball team for the 1972 Munich Olympics. Her hopes were dashed, however, when the International Olympic Committee decided not to introduce women's basketball at the Games. But for 76-year-old Chiyoko Inafuku, Elza's grandmother, the man she met nearly 60 years ago while working as a waitress at Kadena Air Base has long been "history," she said in a recent interview at her home in Uruma, Okinawa Prefecture. The man, whose name is believed to be Tom Snell, disappeared suddenly in 1951 when Inafuku was pregnant with Tammy. Until his disappearance, Snell had been a caring boyfriend throughout the roughly one year they spent together, bringing boxes of clothes, tableware and other gifts to her home after her pregnancy forced her to quit her job at the base. "It was a great shock to me," said Inafuku, speaking about him in detail for the first time since he disappeared. The strain of thinking about it kept her awake the night before the interview, she said. Elza Sasaki, a junior at Japan Women's College of Physical Education in Tokyo, and Tammy Sasaki, an aerobics instructor in Tottori Prefecture, were with Inafuku during the interview because were both anxious to learn about the man they had only seen in a photograph. Inafuku's photo shows a smiling Snell in his U.S. Air Force uniform, which indicated his rank was technical sergeant, or "tech sergeant," as she recalls...
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[/floatr]The two met when Inafuku was 18 and Snell 22. She remembers...that he was Jewish and his hometown was in Ohio. With brown eyes and brown hair, Snell was a little skinny but "a handsome man who looked like Jiro Tamiya," Inafuku said with a smile, referring to the late Japanese actor. After he disappeared, the pregnant Inafuku, who could only speak broken English, did all she could to find him. She wrote a letter, had it translated into English and asked one of his colleagues to send it to him, but heard nothing from Snell himself. She repeated the process, but in vain. After the second attempt and the passing of the years, she said her feelings for him slowly faded. "I had to raise a child and had simply no time for that (searching for him)," she said...As a child, Tammy Sasaki was often bullied and ridiculed because of her Caucasian appearance. She was called "konketsu" (mixed breed) and had sand thrown over her head as she was walking down the street...But Tammy Sasaki said she used the discrimination to make her stronger. "When I was young, I wanted to become a world famous person so I could find my father and tell him, 'You are selfish and irresponsible,' " said Tammy...more...
