Although The Woman in the White Kimono is a work of fiction, I crafted it from real events and stories, including my own—or rather, my father’s. His story of the beautiful Japanese girl he loved while enlisted in the US Navy. Her family had invited him to a traditional tea, but upon meeting him, an American sailor, he was refused. From there, research and my imagination took over.
I worked backward from what I knew—locations of ports, service dates and my father’s story. Then forward with research, digging through international marriage and birth registry laws for the United States, Japan and the military. From all three, I found only bureaucratic red tape designed to thwart interracial marriage. The small percentage of servicemen permitted to marry confronted strict immigration quotas and, when they returned home, America’s anti-miscegenation laws. And while Japanese brides faced serious discrimination in the US, it was nothing compared to those left behind in Japan. Exiles in their own country, these women had no means of support.
Over ten thousand babies were born to American servicemen and Japanese women before, during and after the Occupation. Ten thousand. Out of those, just over seven hundred children were surrendered to the Elizabeth Saunders Home—an orphanage in Oiso, Japan, created in 1948 by Miki Sawada, the Mitsubishi heiress, specifically for abandoned mixed-race children.
But how and why did this happen?
By answering those questions, I was able to create a probable narrative, but it was in finding the real-life survivors—the children of the Elizabeth Saunders Home—and in learning their stories that The Woman in the White Kimono took on a story of its own.
The Orphanage in Oiso
I based the orphanage for mixed-race babies in Oiso that Naoko learns about on the real-life Elizabeth Saunders Home created in 1948 by Miki Sawada, the Mitsubishi heiress. In her autobiography, Miki states that in 1947, while riding on a train, the dead body of a mixed-race baby wrapped in layers of newspaper and cloth fell from an overhead compartment onto her lap. This horrific incident inspired her to start the orphanage.
The home took on the name Elizabeth Saunders in honor of the orphanage’s first donor, a Christian Englishwoman who spent forty years in Japan as a governess in the service of the Mitsui family.
Naoko, Jin, Hatsu, Sora, Chiyo, Aiko and Yoko
Naoko and the girls in the maternity home are inspired from real-life stories of the many adoptees from the Elizabeth Saunders Home I met and interviewed while attending the first US reunion held on Shelter Island in San Diego. I continue to be a part of this wonderful community through the Elizabeth Saunders Home Reunion Group on Facebook, which is run by the great-niece of Elizabeth Saunders.
The Bamboo Maternity Home
The Bamboo Maternity Home is fictional, but I based it on the Kotobuki Maternity Hospital in Shinjukuin, Japan. In 1948, Waseda police officers, working from a tip, found the remains of five babies. When the autopsies revealed they had not died of natural causes, they searched the property and discovered seventy more. However, due to the expansive grounds, the exact death toll remains unknown.
Housemother Sato
Miyuki Ishikawa, the real-life “Demon Midwife” who ran the Kotobuki Maternity Hospital in the 1940s, inspired the character of Housemother Sato. Tried in the Tokyo District Court, and based on testimonies, they charged Miyuki Ishikawa with over one hundred and sixty infants’ and children’s deaths. Found guilty, they sentenced her to eight years in prison.
Because of this publicized incident, on June 24, 1949, abortion for “economic reasons only” was legalized under the Eugenic Protection Law in Japan, and a national examination system for midwives was established.
In 1952, Miyuki Ishikawa appealed the eight-year sentence, citing she had inadequate economic means to support the influx of unwanted babies born in her maternity home, and won. The Tokyo High Court reduced her original sentence to just four years.
The Girl with Red Shoes
The song and the stories that inspired the statues are all true. The little girl’s name was Iwasaki Kimi, and the original statue in her honor stands in Yokohama, where the orphanage once stood. On June 27, 2010, to commemorate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Port of Yokohama, Japan, delegates from Japan presented a matching “Girl with Red Shoes” statue as a gift to their sister city, the Port of San Diego. The statue stands on the shore of Shelter Island near the US naval base.
The Village in Taura where Hajime rents a house
The village in the real town of Taura is fictional, but I based the community on the real-life Eta hamlets that once existed in Japan. Burakumin were a socioeconomic minority within the larger Japanese ethnic group. They were members of outcast communities in the Japanese feudal era, composed of those working in occupations considered impure or tainted by death, such as executioners, undertakers, butchers or tanners. Historically, they suffered severe discrimination and ostracism. Although the Burakumin class was officially abolished in 1871, their descendants still face discrimination.
Jizō statues and Ojizō-sama
In traditional Japanese Buddhist teachings, Ojizō-sama is the monk known for helping babies cross over to the afterlife. It is said mizuko, water children—the stillborn, miscarried and aborted—cannot cross over alone. A Jizō statue wears the baby’s clothing, a bright red bib and cap, to alert Ojizō-sama they are waiting for him to smuggle them into the afterlife in the sleeves of his robe. Jizō statues are common in cemeteries throughout Japan.
Pops’s and Naoko’s tales
The Great Divide story is based on the navy’s rite of passage for young sailors in their first Pacific crossing over the Meridian and International Date Line. There is a giant anchor outside the Womble Gate entrance at the naval base in Yokosuka, an American town near the base with a statue of Lady Liberty, and yes, nearby you will find “Blue Street,” so named for the blue and white stone chips embedded in the asphalt. While I created Pops’s stories around those real locations, I pulled Naoko’s tales from Japanese myths and folklore.
Although I set this novel aside several times, it called me back again and again. With knowledge comes responsibility, and since I knew—ten thousand babies—I bore a responsibility to share their story. It is my sincerest hope that The Woman in the White Kimono shines a bright light in multiple directions without blame or forced resolution. It is through their acknowledgment that these children live. Like Naoko’s Little Bird, I place my story, their story—a beautiful and tragic truth—within your hands. What you do with it is up to you.