What a delightful story! Just finished reading this beautiful memoir (not letters) of U.S. Navy man Stephen whose life was changed when he met a Japanese girl while stationed in Japan during the 1950s. What looks like it was meant to be a family-only tribute to memorialize his deceased wife, Ryuko, this was published after Stephen’s death by his then wife, Arlene. It is a sweet love story set mostly in post-war Japan and full of sensitive observations of daily life and culture, not the usual “gaijin” male writing about those people in Japan. Stephen learned the language and enjoyed living in a rental house by the sea with his beloved Ryuko while Japan was still recovering from WWII and not yet modernized. Once they could be married, the couple went to live in the U.S. where Ryuko learned to adapt.

I can tell Stephen wrote this for his children to remember their mother as well as to honor Ryuko after her untimely death. It has a lot of personal details and thoughts that most non-family readers would find distracting, yet it captures so well life in the Navy and in old Japan. This is around the same time my Army dad met my mother in Japan so I found these details dear to my heart. I am working with my dad to finish his memoir that ends with his impressions of post-War Japan and his marriage. My dad, like Stephen, loved this Japan and came home with a wife, as did so many of our military men stationed there.

Years after Ryuko died, Stephen married Arlene who obviously did not feel threatened by her husband’s previous great love and felt his story was beautiful and important enough to publish for anyone to read. So we get to read this very sweet, very personal story brimming over with love and immortalizing both Stephen and Ryuko and the old culture of Japan. As my dad ends his memoir, sayonara.