It All Started in the Afternoon of August 13, 1969

My mother, Keiko Ono, at work in the publicity department of the Kobe City Council of Social Welfare. (1969)

Ever since I was a little girl, I loved old folk tales. Not the typical Japanese folk tales like “Momotaro” and “Issunboshi,” mind you. I liked the stories passed down from my parents and grandparents. The food they ate, the way they played, their relationships with their parents and friends sounded so foreign to me because Japan has dramatically changed in the last 100 years. Their stories were about the changes and the people who have lived through them. Because I have only a handful of photos and a few tales in my memory, I decided to interview my parents and hopefully my grandmother, who is rapidly losing her memory. My private documentary, filled with my own suppositions where facts were foggy, will be replaced by a public series of interviews.

“When did we meet? Let me ask your dad.” Mom passed the phone to him. It was a warm and sunny summer day in Seattle and a humid and hot one in Kobe.

“You need a date? You know that asking your mom won’t give you an answer,” Dad said. “I can give you the exact date. It was the afternoon of August 13, 1969!”

My parents were born in 1946 — right after World War II. They graduated from the same high school in Kobe but met for the first time at an after-school kids club where they volunteered. “I remember the exact date because it was the day I returned to Kobe after four months of on-the-job training in Fujitsu headquarters in Tokyo and also the first day of the three-day Bon holiday,” Dad said. “My engineering job was going alright, but I actually wanted to be a teacher. My volunteer experience at the kids club in my senior year opened my eyes to the joy of teaching, so I got a teaching license in 1968 while in college and kept studying for the teacher recruitment exam even after I got hired by Fujitsu. That’s how I came to visit the kids club upon my return to Kobe. Then there she was, sitting by a plastic basin with goldfish swimming in it.”

I heard Mom correct him in the background: “They were turtles.”

“I was working in the publicity department of the Kobe City Council of Social Welfare after college,” Mom said as she grabbed the phone from Dad. “One day, your dad showed up at the kids club. First thing I thought was, ‘He has a unique face.’ We started seeing each other often at volunteer meetings, and I noticed his clean-cut nails. I can’t stand men with dirty nails. His shirt was super clean, too. As you know, cleanliness is very important to me. Then I thought, ‘I bet he takes a bath properly every day.’”

“I guess this talk is stimulating your mom’s memory,” Dad said as he retrieved the phone. “She remembers turtles but doesn’t remember the date we met. Did I feel something when I saw your mom? I had a girlfriend at that time, and I didn’t have any eyes for other women while I was in a relationship. But I got myself involved again with the kids club, and your mom and I met many times in groups. My relationship with the girlfriend ended when I finally got hired as a teacher and quit the engineering job in Fujitsu, but it still took me another two months before making the first phone call to your mom from a payphone a block away from the apartment where your grandparents used to live. It was December 1969.”

“How did you react when you got the call?” I asked Mom. She laughed hard and said, “I was like, ‘Hooray! I was waiting for this!’ I felt like something fun was going to happen. When he proposed to me three months later, it was like everything was in place. Things were totally different from my previous relationships. I had nothing to worry about with your dad. Well, at least, that’s how it started.”