Gwendolen terasaki biography of william
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And yet, she does come up with a viable solution: instead of trying to assist the many, which she comes to understand is both physically and financially impossible, she gives money, food and clothing to one, a little beggar girl.
While still in Shanghai, another incident occurred on February 26, 1936, that captured the intensity and uncertainty of the times.
We are made privy to an early morning phone call from Tokyo, informing Terry that there had been an insurrection; a group of junior military officers of a Tokyo regiment had assassinated a number of liberal statesmen. They are written in the clear hand of youth, on stationary printed with the words “Higher Than Mount Fujiyama / Deeper Than The Pacific.” Gwen missed this romantic young diplomat for the rest of her life, and spoke of him almost every day until she died, on December 15, 1990.
By Gwen Terasaki
NEWPORT: WAKESTONE BOOKS, 2000
272 PAGES
Reviewed by Craig Loomis
In the winter of 1930, twenty-three-year-old Gwen Harold left Johnson City, Tennessee, to visit an aunt in Washington D.C.
for what she thought would be no more than two or three months. She goes on to mention that as the war persisted the food problem became so profound that all pets and even the animals at the zoo were killed. He currently teaches English at Sacramento City College while continuing to write about Asia.
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Bridge to the Sun: A Memoir of Love and War
This portion of the book is, I think, the most insightful and intriguing, for it gives readers a first-hand account of what life was like in a Japan that was poor and starving, as well as misinformed and mislead by its government.
Once back in Japan, the author gives us glimpses of the Japanese mindset during this troubled period.
And then there was the time of the neighborhood meeting when instructions were given that “every person of adult age must provide himself with a bamboo spear of certain length with which to meet the enemy [the Americans] when they came to invade the islands.” These are the sorts of anecdotes and mini-tales that serve to capture the essence of Gwen Terasaki’s personality.
She took care of her parents during their declining years and visited her daughter and grandchildren at their home in Wyoming.
She kept in touch with her Japanese friends and gave frequent talks about the “bridge across the Pacific” she and her husband had dreamed of building when they married in
1931. "Keep a stout heart my darling, you're going to need it!"
I learned more about Japanese culture and customs - clothing, food, manners.
To the best of my knowledge, there are very few first-hand accounts from Americans who actually lived in Japan during the war years. Gwen had saved them all. It was made into a film by MGA starring Carol Baker and James Shigeta, which premiered in 1961.
Gwen Teraski with Carol Baker. When a Japanese language edition of Bridge to the Sun was published in Tokyo in 1958, Gwen embarked on an extensive tour of her husband’s country.
In many ways it is larger than that, for it is the story of every family that has ever been entangled in the jaws of war.
CRAIG LOOMIS lived and taught in Asia for over fifteen years. For instance, when she first encounters life in Shanghai, she is appalled by the devastating hunger and poverty that surround her.
She is one of very few American women who lived in Japan during the war years.
Gwen was invited to appear on an NHK television program during her tour of Japan. As an American, Gwen could have stayed in the U.S., but she decides that as a family they should stay together.
In the remainder of the book (some eight chapters), spanning 1942–7, Gwen Terasaki records the events, situations and emotions that she and her family must cope with as they struggle to survive in wartime Japan, and its aftermath.
The program, modeled after This Is Your Life, was called Koko ni kane ga naru. One of the many stories she passes on is how she often wore “dark glasses” whenever she went out shopping or walking, and how at that time the “accepted idea of a saboteur was anyone who always wore dark glasses”; as a result, it was not uncommon for someone to yell at her, supai (spy).
This story enveloped me: I read further online about Hidenari "Terry" Terasaki (1900-1951), Gwen Terasaki (1906-1990), and Mariko Terasaki Miller (1932-1916). After Pearl Harbor, Gwen insisted on keeping the family together despite Terry’s warnings that Japan would be destroyed and their lives in great peril. During these early diplomatic wanderings, Gwen Terasaki does not hesitate to share her joys and victories as well as her fears and frustrations with readers.
As she grew older she surrounded herself with mementos — letters written home during the occupation, family photographs, fan mail from readers, faded newspaper clippings that chronicled their public lives together. One is content to sit in the sun and do nothing; one even forgets that there is anything to do.