The Stories of the ‘War Brides’ of Japan Need to Be Told

Aug. 1, 2016 • Yayoi Lena Winfrey

One day in the early 1980s, my Japanese mother took my sister and me to an International District gift shop. A middle-aged Japanese American man working there glanced briefly towards us, before turning away apathetically. His body language seemed to indicate a reluctance to wait on us. I looked at my mother and, without the necessity of my uttering a single word, she said, “He not like me.”  Then, pointing at us, her two half-black daughters, she declared in her …