After a lifelong separation by war, a woman orphaned in the Philippines “comes home” for the first time to her father’s village in Okinawa
Zenaida Sumiko Fusato (right) tearfully grasping the hand of her half-brother, Toshio Fusato (left). May 25, Naha Airport
May 26, 2019 Ryukyu Shimpo
After war separated her from her father her entire life, Zenaida Sumiko Fusato, 78, who was orphaned in the Philippines during the war, landed at Naha Airport May 25, and set foot in her father’s hometown in Okinawa for the first time. Sumiko, who was greeted and embraced by her half-brother Toshio Fusato (71, from Uruma) reflected happily, “I thought my father had forgotten about us, but what has happened here today is thanks to him.”
Sumiko’s father, Okinawan-born Seihan Fusato, died in 1996, and her mother, second-generation Japanese-Filipino Antonia Terada, died during the war in 1945.
After the war, the orphaned Sumiko, paid her way through school by helping out with housework at a relative’s house. It was then that an aunt on her mother’s side found Sumiko’s father’s birth certificate, and she learned that her father was “Yamato Fusato.” It seem that Yamato was a childhood name.
While looking for her father, she learned in 2007 in a survey conducted by the Philippine Nikkei-jin Legal Support Center, she learned that her father was Kiyoshige Fusato. She also learned that Kiyoshige was forced to return to Okinawa after the war, and that he had already died. Toshio learned that he had an older sister from a friend of his father. Kiyoshige never spoke of his past life in the Philippines, but on his death bed asked a favor of the friend.
The first time Sumiko and Toshio met was in 2015, 70 years after the end of the war. Sumiko had tears of joy as her long-held prayers to meet her father’s family had finally come true. Tohsio, who was deeply moved by this though, “I want to take her to visit father’s grave,” and brought Sumiko to Okinawa for the first time.
On May 26, Sumiko visited Tsuken, where Kiyoshige is laid to rest. “I visited my father’s grave. I could not wish for anything more.” She beamed with joy over being reunited with her father.
(English translation by T&CT and Sam Grieb)
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