They no longer speak the same language, but two brothers separated nearly 60 years each think the other has not changed a bit.
Minoru Ohye, a Japanese American, celebrated his 86th birthday on Monday with his only brother after traveling to Japan for a reunion with him.
The brothers were born in Sacramento, California, but were separated as children after their father died in a fishing accident. They were sent to live with relatives in Japan and ended up in different homes.
EXCHANGING GIFTS
The reunited brothers hugged in a hotel room and exchanged gifts of California chocolate and Japanese sake. The American brother wore his trademark baseball cap and jeans. The Japanese bother wore a suit and tie.
However, the same bright eyes and square jaws were a dead giveaway that they were brothers. They both loved golf and had back pains. They thought the other had not changed a bit.
“If we miss this chance, we may never meet. You never know,” said Ohye, energetic except for a sore knee. “Either he may die, or I may die.”
Separated across the Pacific, their only prior meeting had been a brief one in the mid-1950s, when Ohye stopped by Japan while serving in the US Army in the demilitarized zone on the Korean Peninsula.
His brother, Hiroshi Kamimura, 84, was adopted by a Japanese family, grew up in the ancient capital of Kyoto and became a tax accountant. He married and had three sons.
Ohye joined the youth group of the Japanese Imperial Army at 13 and went to Russia, where he was sent to a Siberian coal mine when Japan surrendered. He returned to be with his mother in Yuba City, California, in 1951, and worked as a bookbinder and a gardener.
He became homeless when he failed to collect payment for a restaurant he ran and later sold in the late 1950s.
About 10 years ago, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, a welfare service organization for US veterans, found him a spot in the Eskaton Wilson Manor home for the elderly.
It was Eskaton’s program to grant a wish called “Thrill of a Lifetime” that got Ohye back to Japan.
FUNDRAISER
While others wished for rafting trips and football game tickets, the only thing Ohye wanted was to see his brother again. Eskaton administrator Debbie Reynolds put together a fundraiser for Ohye’s trip.
Kamimura acknowledged it had been difficult to communicate with his brother through telephone calls because he did not understand English. They would exchange a lot of “hellos” and then their conversations ended, he said.
“I am happy. He is the only brother I have,” Kamimura said after watching Ohye blow out the candles on a birthday cake at a restaurant. “This may be our last time together.”
Brian Berry, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo who was approached by Reynolds to help with the reunion and got Ohye from the Tokyo airport to Kyoto, was relieved the brothers were together at last.
“Even over time, with all that has been gone through, still the only thing you are thinking about is your family,” he said.
“Right when you’re near the end of your life, you are still thinking about your family,” he said.
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS