It has been more than 60 years since Nguyen Thi Xuan’s husband, a Japanese soldier, left her in Vietnam, but the 94-year-old still sleeps with a body pillow she fashioned from his military uniform.
She is one of scores of Vietnamese women who fell in love with soldiers from Japan’s occupying force, going on to carve a life with them at the end of the war, but within a decade many of the men had abandoned them, often leaving their families in penury and facing accusations of treachery for setting up home with the enemy.
However, Xuan has no axe to grind against the former occupiers — least of all her husband.
Photo: AFP
“I miss him a lot. I can never forget my husband, because he was so nice,” Xuan said in Vinh Thanh village on the outskirts of Hanoi.
Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko are to meet with the families — including Xuan’s — next week on a historic trip to Vietnam, a landmark visit for the former foes that have become allies since diplomatic relations were established in 1973.
Xuan was pregnant with her fourth child when her husband, Shimizu, left in 1954 and said she received no support from either government, despite his military service.
“We suffered a lot” since he left, Xuan said, clutching a photograph of her husband, who adopted the Vietnamese name Nguyen Van Duc while living in the nation. “I don’t know how we overcame that period. I still feel scared thinking of that difficult past.”
She met Shimizu in 1943 during the 1940 to 1945 Japanese occupation of Vietnam, which had previously been under French colonial rule. They married soon after.
The young couple could only afford to serve biscuits and sweets to guests at their small wedding.
After Japan’s defeat in World War II, about 700 of its troops stayed on, many of them joining forces with Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh in his fight to secure independence from the French.
After France was defeated in 1954, Shimizu was among the first wave ordered to return home by Japanese authorities, who refused to accept their Vietnamese wives or children.
However, Xuan remembers her husband as a “very nice man.”
“I made a pillow from a military jacket he left behind for me, covering it with a [Vietnamese] flag. I imagined my husband was the star,” she said, smiling while referring to the red and gold cascade. “It means he is with me all the time, in my sleep.”
She lost track of him after he left in 1954 until the couple were reunited by Japanese journalists in 2006, 52 years after they bid a sad farewell.
He had remarried, but she remained single, working as a nurse, a nanny and a farmhand to raise their children.
Life was not easy for her children in their small village.
“There was discrimination. I fought with local residents who bullied us, saying we were children of Japanese fascists,” her youngest son, Binh, 62, said.
Today, Japan is a leading investor in Vietnam and the nation’s top aid donor. Thousands of Vietnamese students travel to Japan to study every year, many coming home speaking fluent Japanese.
The royal couple’s five-day trip from Tuesday next week follows a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month.
Although none of Xuan’s family has ever traveled there, Japan has shaped their lives.
Now in her twilight years, she still sings Japanese ballads she learned by heart and says she is eager to meet the emperor next week, offering no notes of bitterness.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a