In July 1983 I was a member of a police team investigating the murder of a banker who was found strangled with a bathrobe belt and dumped in a banana plantation in a remote area of the New Territories, Hong Kong. Investigation proved that the murder took place in the five-star Regent Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. One of the Assistant Managers of the hotel, a Japanese national named Faith Yayoi Numa, was assigned to assist us in the enquiries. A suspect was soon identified and arrested, the case went to the Supreme Court in Hong Kong, and the man was eventually found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
During the investigation, Faith and I realized there was a chemistry between us and we shortly afterward became engaged. The following spring we travelled together to England so that she could meet my parents. I had told Faith about my father’s experiences as a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Burma. As in other families whose menfolk had been prisoners of the Japanese during the war, no Japanese product ever crossed the threshold of our house, and the Japanese were never spoken of. However, I hoped that my parents would accept Faith, especially my father, and even learn to love and appreciate her.
So it was with some trepidation that Faith and I took the British Airways Jumbo from Hong Kong to London. To my great relief, my father was courteous and kind to Faith, though my mother was cold and distant. I explained to Faith that my mother had been this way since I was a teenager, thinking no girlfriend of mine good enough for me!
Another trial for us took place when we went to the ex-Servicemen’s Club in Birmingham for a drink and dance. Some of my father’s friends who had been captured by the Japanese in Singapore and served on the notorious Burma railway were there. To our surprise these men were civil and friendly with Faith, which I think gave my father an opportunity to break the ice with her, and he seemed more relaxed in her company. Faith gradually brought my father around with her charming way to the point that one day he asked her whether, if he wrote a letter, she would send it to a national daily newspaper in Japan. He said that he would have liked to meet up, if possible, with one of his ex-guards who had actually been very kind and friendly to him and other prisoners in Rangoon Jail. Faith readily agreed, and on our return to Hong Kong sent a copy of his letter to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. We still have my father’s letter today. Unfortunately, Asahi Shimbun could not help my father. At that time, the Japanese government was trying to help repatriate all the Japanese ‘War Orphans’ left behind in China by their Japanese parents at the end of the war, and Asahi Shimbun were putting all their efforts into this project.
In October 1985 Faith and I were married at the Cotton Tree Marriage Registry in Hong Kong and we made arrangements for the wedding reception to be held at the Regent Hotel the following month. This was to be the big test as my parents and Faith’s parents would meet for the first time. Faith’s mother and father were of the same ages as my parents, and her father had served in the Imperial Japanese Army throughout the war in northern China. Faith’s parents were courteous and friendly towards my parents, but my parents were extremely cold and avoided them as much as possible. Now that I have read my father’s memoir and appreciate what he had to go through, I can imagine how difficult it had been for my father to accept that his one and only son was going to marry a Japanese national. All the horrible memories must have flooded back to him as he faced Faith’s father, a Japanese man. Throughout the reception Faith and I were on tenterhooks, but thankfully it went without incident.
After we returned from our honeymoon, I received a letter from my parents telling me that they were disowning me and no longer considered me their son.
This naturally hurt and upset me a great deal, but it was actually worse for Faith, who blamed herself for my parents’ behaviour.
Two years later when we were back in Europe on leave, Faith told me that it would mean the world to her if my parents and I reconciled. She told me that my parents would have been missing me terribly and most probably they must have been sorry for what they said in their letter. She then urged me to go and pay my parents a visit, and assured me that everything would turn out alright. So I went, reluctantly as I was still hurt, but sure enough my parents welcomed me back. They also wanted to see Faith.
After that day in 1988, my parents started coming to Hong Kong to stay with us once every two or three years. At that time, satellite TV was not readily available in Hong Kong, but they did broadcast an hour-long Japanese drama series on Sunday, which was called the Japanese Hour. Every Sunday Faith watched a Japanese home drama called ‘Wataru Seken ha Oni Bakari’ which literally means ‘Demons the World Over’. The series featured a typical Japanese family, their loves, ties and daily problems. One Sunday my father joined her and was soon engrossed in the drama, so much so that when back in England he wrote to Faith and asked her to update him on what happened in subsequent episodes.
Over the next five years my father and Faith became very close, and he told her once that he thought the world of her, which meant a great deal to us. He also told everyone around him that Faith was the best thing that happened to his son. He always kissed her goodbye when we visited them in England or when they came to Hong Kong, and he loved to spend time talking with her.
In October 1993 I visited my parents and as usual at the end of my leave my father came with me from Birmingham in my hired car to Heathrow, where I treated him to lunch before putting him on the coach back to Birmingham. On this occasion I asked him why he always insisted on coming with me to Heathrow to see me off when it meant a tiring four-hour journey back home by coach. I told him that I would have been happy for him to say goodbye at the house, as my mother did. He responded with these words. ‘When I used to go to the train station in Birmingham to return to my regiment after leave, no one ever saw me off, and I don’t want that for you.’ Then, when he was about to board the coach, he did a strange thing which he had never done before. He turned around, hugged me and said, ‘I love you,’ to which I replied, ‘I love you, too, Dad.’ He went up the steps and the coach drove off. That was the last time I saw my father. He died on December 1, 1993. I later found out that he knew he did not have long to live.
I would like to think that in his heart he had overcome his hatred of the Japanese.