Tamiko: A Family History

By Tamiko Shimoyama and Masako Glushien

A poignant memoir that tells Tamiko’s remarkable life journey in Japan. Following the sudden death of her mother, she continued to endure struggles throughout childhood and financial ruin while raising her own family during post-war Japan, her unwavering faith helped her overcome the many challenges she faced during a time when the country was trying to rebuild itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jun 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483411316

Book preview

History

Tamiko

Tamiko Shimoyama

with Masako Glushien

Copyright © 2014 Tamiko Shimoyama with Masako Glushien.

Cover design by Yosef Glushien

Back cover symble—The Shimoyamas’ family crest

is comprised of two crossing hawk feathers in circle.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-1132-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-1131-6 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 5/28/2014

CONTENTS

Introduction

Tamiko’s Early Life

A Guardian Angel

The Death of Mother

Caring for the Baby Brother, Saburo

Miracle

Attending the Local Sewing Class

Outbreak of the War

Marriage

The First Business in the City of Kobe

The Family Moves to Kobe City

Rising Again

Hitting Rock Bottom

Finally, the Light Shines in the House

The Makeshift Store

Epilogue

Introduction

This book is based on a short memoir that my mother, Tamiko, handwrote on notepaper when she lived with my family—two young children (four and eight years old at the time), my husband, and me—in the US for fifteen months in 1988. It was her third visit; she stayed with us for a total of two years and nine months over her three visits. Having heard about her hard life, I suggested she write about it while she was with us.

I never saw her writing it. She wrote in the basement, a large, empty room that held only a television set and an old couch, where she felt comfortable recalling sometimes-painful memories. She removed a cushion from the couch and, sitting on the floor, Japanese style, used the wooden surface underneath as her makeshift desk. She wrote until my younger child came home from school and then spent time with her upstairs.

When she was at the final writing stage, she cut out small strips from white stickers to cover her mistakes and make corrections, showing her painstaking effort to write correctly. She never showed it to me until she finished, when she asked me to make a cover for the fifteen pages of her memoir.

Preoccupied with raising my children, I didn’t read it until twenty years later. I sent a copy to my oldest brother, who was living in Japan. He typed copies from her handwritten memoir for our siblings and relatives, but when he read the chapter about Tamiko’s mother’s death, he was moved to tears and had to stop typing for a while. It was at that time that my mother’s life changed drastically and she began to face a chain of hardships.

My mother’s life journey was both remarkable and poignant. When she was a teenager, there was neither local public transportation nor electricity; she walked wherever she needed to go and washed clothes in the icy-cold river without soap.

My father’s life as a child was very different from my mother’s. He grew up in