A Thousand Stitches is a gift from Constance O’Keefe, the author, to Isako Imamura, the widow of Professor Shigeo Imamura (Shig). Shig and Isako had a great impact on Connie’s life, beginning when she was a graduate student working with Professor Imamura at Michigan State University. After graduation, Connie obtained a teaching position in Japan thanks to Professor Imamura. Thus began her lifelong love of Japan: the country, its people, its history, its language, and its culture.
When Shig died in 1998, Isako asked Connie and two of Shig’s other graduate students (Stephanie Vandrick and me) to help her see his memoir published. Isako was committed to telling Shig’s story—an anti-war story of a Nisei, Japanese American, who moved with his parents from San Francisco to Japan in 1932 at the age of ten. After serving in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II, Shig spent his life promoting peace through international education and cultural understanding. We three quickly agreed to help Isako and began work on what we called the “Shig Project. “
In 2001, Shig: The true story of an American Kamikaze: A memoir by Shigeo Imamura was published. Anyone who knew Shig hears his voice in his memoir, a straightforward recollection of his experiences. About this time and with Isako’s blessings, Connie began working on a fictionalized version of Shig’s story—A Thousand Stitches. In the novel two stories are tied together by a senninbari, a belt of a thousand stitches made by a thousand female hands given by wives and sweethearts to Japanese men on their way to war as an amulet: one the main character’s story, largely based on Shig’s life, and the other a fictionalized story of his high school sweetheart who gave him a senninbari. Connie’s work began as an extension of the Shig Project. This time, however, she was not the coordinator of the project; rather she was the sole creator.
Connie threw herself into writing the novel with the same intellect, enthusiasm, patience, and attention to detail that she gave to all her work, professional and personal. Building on her extensive knowledge of Japan and its culture and her research for the memoir, she began. A voracious reader since childhood, she read anything she could get her hands on about World War II–era Japan, about fiction writing, and topics closely and peripherally related to the content of the novel. She researched every detail, amassing books on such topics as Japanese cranes, Japanese poetry, the Zero plane, memoirs of Japanese and U.S. soldiers, stories of Japanese civilians, and World War II history books. She joined and built writing communities, in person and online.
When she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2008, she had a draft of the novel and had already sent parts out to several people for comment. She continued to work on the novel as long as possible: checking details, adding and rearranging material, and polishing the prose. During times when she was feeling well, she would walk to the nearby public library several days a week to work there. She was committed to her dream of publishing the novel for Isako and telling Shig’s story. She was able to complete the novel before her death on March 19, 2011. During her illness, she asked me if I would see that her novel was published. I was honored and quickly gave her my promise. We agreed that any profits from the novel would go to the Shigeo and Isako Imamura fellowships that Mrs. Imamura endowed: one at Michigan State University and the other at the University of San Francisco.
I am pleased that Connie’s dream and her gift to Isako are now a reality. In her acknowledgments, Connie graciously thanks many people and notes the joy she found working on the novel and the Shig Project. I add my thanks to those who knew and supported Connie. Also I thank the many, some of whom never met Connie, who have supported and encouraged me on this journey to fulfill my promise to her. With her request asking me to see her novel published, Connie gave me a wonderful gift. I am forever grateful to her for this and much more.
Johnnie Johnson Hafernik
January 8, 2014