This is my story: I came back to Okinawa in August of 1990. We went to visit oji the 2nd of September but found him unresponsive, he just passed away while oba was gone for an errand to the store. The next few weeks the family was busy with all the traditional prayers and burial activities. Oji's ashes was sent to Miyako where they originally from and where the Chonan still lives Then everything was back to normal. I was in Okinawa straight until 2006 but never went to Miyako during obon. When I moved to California then visited Miyako the first time but never visited my Oji's tomb. The next summer I came back to Okinawa there was a feeling of I should go back to Miyako. I went to buy a ticket and the date I wanted was sold out and got the day before instead. When I arrived in Miyako, I rented a car and went straight to the hostel where I have a reservation. My cousin the Chonan met there and asked me if I wanted to come with him in his house and offer my prayer reminding me that I arrived on my Oji's death anniversary which I totally forgot the date. A co incidence why I did not get the date of the ticket I wanted? Anyway, I went to offer my prayers and afterwards we planned to visit the ohaka the next day after his work. The next day since I have a free whole day I thought I will drive around Miyako. Since I was there the year before and has seen places I thought I will visit the museum this time. Basing the drive from the car rental magazine I configure my gps. As I drove some of the roads were familiar and I actually passed the Botanical Garden where our Taira family has a historical monument. As I passed that area farther, the gps instructed me to turn right. I ended up in a small street entering an area of tombs and at the end the street was blocked. I made a uturn and used the printed map. Continued on the main street before the gps asked me that right turn. I continued on and found the museum but it was close on Monday :( Before I drove back I fixed the GPS back to the hostel as I have to meet my chonan cousin to visit oji's graveyard. As I left the museum and driving back, the gps instructed me to turn left which I did. As I turned I was back in the same street with the tombs so I made a uturn, took a picture of the big rock with some writings ( my kanji is limited to 3rd grade so I could not read ) Since I have a couple of hours left, I went to the car rental and requested to change car as this car's gps is not accurate. They explained to me that the gps signal is all the same, it is coming from the sky station. I showed them the picture I took where it asked me to turn twice when the street has blockage. Everyone got quite and told me they can not change my car. I went back to the hostel and waited for my chonan cousin. When he arrived I offered to drive and he can give me the instruction where to go. We stopped at the Supermarket to buy flowers and drinks offerings and back to the road. Few minutes later as he was giving me the road way, we ended up in a familiar road. With the hairs on my arms now all standing I asked, " is the tomb on the right side of this street? " He asked me how did I know? Told him I have been here twice this morning, the car gps told me to turn this way. As we entered the place, my oji's tomb is just the second line where I made both of my uturn. I cried like a baby, (I am in tears as I am typing this now) how I never visited him of all the 15 years of obon I was in Okinawa. Since then I include Miyako in my annual Okinawa trip.
Thursday, September 30, 2021
Monday, September 12, 2011
Physically Challenge
One has to be "retarded" to appreciate and enjoy life. I have never met a retarded who was not smiling, somehow I have this theory that in their imperfection the hate, insecurities, selfishness, greed and all those negative traits were not included in their development too and that they only have Love and Happines left as their emotion.
The boy with no shoes
Sunday, June 19, 2011
I have always wondered if he had dreams beyond the age when he passed away at 52 years of age. He went to work in dark suit and necktie the norm for desk clerk where he worked for 25 years 8 hours a day. After office hours like a typical Pinoy he had his own stint, he was black marketing tobacco and alcohol to the local community. He was a good provider, not only to his children but also to his Filipino relatives as well as his friends who has given him sad stories of hunger, and financial needs. A very quiet man, he rarely spoke and if he does it was short and with sense. Talk I would remember as “The car is provided as a necessity and not a luxury.” “Each piece of rice or food that you waste is my sweat from working.” The best one was when my oldest sister was wearing a mini dress, “ Am I not sending you enough money, that your dressmaker can not make you a longer dress?” His everyday routine would pick up the newspaper in the morning, read the headlines, afterwards pick up a pen and start to fill up the little squares of the crossword puzzle. He was known to his friends as the walking dictionary. What is it with this man who I never really know but as a good provider? He gave financial help to everyone who was close to him. Working abroad, he was known to be a success to his Filipino blood family. The aftermath of the World War II when uncle Sam gave him the opportunity to use his Japanese language skill which he learned working for the Japanese government during their 3 years of Philippine occupation which one not dare to discuss….. He was on his way to the Ryukyu Islands. Years later he came back to the Philippines nobody heard about him for many years that they thought he died during the war. His father who had an illegitimate child was named after him. Later this half brother he provided a land to take care of their lively hood and his other siblings can harvest products in yearly rotation. I remember as a child as we walked the property line, to my little feet it took a day, he told his children “ this are all yours” as I panned the greeneries of the hills, bamboos, fruit trees and tall coconut trees. This was later subdivided by his siblings as he has named the property to his sister whom he trusted to be our guardian if something happens to him. For some reason, those relatives who greedily put their hands and claim the properties died one by one or some bad things happens to them. This was the boy who came back to his root and cared when he had the best of everything he shared. This was the boy whom has to live in another town and lived with his maternal aunt to pursue his education when all their wealth was spent on his mother who got sick and his father can not afford to send him to school. This was the boy who during his graduation, his father walked to the next town to borrow a pair of shoes to use for his graduation but came back too late and the graduation ceremony was already over when this boy was called and received the top award of the graduating class and he had no shoes.
He was known to all as a very nice well mannered man, provided financial help to his relatives and friends. I admire him for whatever reason he had and even taking that risk of losing his retirement benefits and future of his children when his name was published in the newspaper involved in black marketing in a foreign country that nobody knew of the people he helped who was supposed to have known him. As I listened so many times of how much he is appreciated my heart would scream as the legacy he left to others was not the same as mine.
As I struggle myself when he was gone, reaching my goals that maybe he dreamt of and to be proud of me. Raising up my own child as a single mother, his memories lingers in my everyday life. Our only difference is I never looked back as I reasoned out that my father’s obligation ended with him…….
Memories of Guillermo Sagaya Tulio
…… on the back of my head, I can hear my mother’s voice talking to my sister and my brother. “If everything is cheap in the Philippines why you guys are bringing so many presents there but when you come back to Japan, you don’t bring anything but a pack of dried mango?”
He was known to all as a very nice well mannered man, provided financial help to his relatives and friends. I admire him for whatever reason he had and even taking that risk of losing his retirement benefits and future of his children when his name was published in the newspaper involved in black marketing in a foreign country that nobody knew of the people he helped who was supposed to have known him. As I listened so many times of how much he is appreciated my heart would scream as the legacy he left to others was not the same as mine.
As I struggle myself when he was gone, reaching my goals that maybe he dreamt of and to be proud of me. Raising up my own child as a single mother, his memories lingers in my everyday life. Our only difference is I never looked back as I reasoned out that my father’s obligation ended with him…….
Memories of Guillermo Sagaya Tulio
…… on the back of my head, I can hear my mother’s voice talking to my sister and my brother. “If everything is cheap in the Philippines why you guys are bringing so many presents there but when you come back to Japan, you don’t bring anything but a pack of dried mango?”
God Bless America
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Nine years had passed since I cried in the middle of the night watching my television as the tower burn and minutes later witnessed the citizens who came to assist in rescue running away chased by the thick white dust as they ran for their lives when the second tower was hit. We know then the rescue firemen were trapped behind. This followed with thousands or maybe millions of civilians and militaries died as we responded the attack on twin towers with war on terror. Not only that the market starts to fall but we have lost our basic rights due to Patriotic Act. Security measures were implemented and just getting into our job facilities and other buildings took hours in line to get inspected. Time was spent more being in line for inspection than the traveling itself as our baggage were inspected even the inside of our wallets which gave some inspectors the chance to steal my money as I was told to stand on the side while my body was being searched. I started wearing flat slip on shoes to show that in no way that a bomb can be hidden in it, this also let me walk ahead and faster to the terminal. Home Security became a job as we spent trillions of our government money on this war of terror. We started to feel the effect as companies closing and people losing their jobs, their houses and especially their pride. This became a domino effect overseas. If there are jobs left, the positions are mostly taken of names we can not pronounce or we can’t spell and the first that the President’s name became foreign. What it is after nine years is the thousand years old religious war was brought in the heart of America now that we have to decide to burn the Koran in response to the building of the Mosque near the ground zero. Sadly to say, that we forgot that America was built for our Christian freedom. As the lady of liberty still holds her torch… "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" God Bless America!
Nine years had passed since I cried in the middle of the night watching my television as the tower burn and minutes later witnessed the citizens who came to assist in rescue running away chased by the thick white dust as they ran for their lives when the second tower was hit. We know then the rescue firemen were trapped behind. This followed with thousands or maybe millions of civilians and militaries died as we responded the attack on twin towers with war on terror. Not only that the market starts to fall but we have lost our basic rights due to Patriotic Act. Security measures were implemented and just getting into our job facilities and other buildings took hours in line to get inspected. Time was spent more being in line for inspection than the traveling itself as our baggage were inspected even the inside of our wallets which gave some inspectors the chance to steal my money as I was told to stand on the side while my body was being searched. I started wearing flat slip on shoes to show that in no way that a bomb can be hidden in it, this also let me walk ahead and faster to the terminal. Home Security became a job as we spent trillions of our government money on this war of terror. We started to feel the effect as companies closing and people losing their jobs, their houses and especially their pride. This became a domino effect overseas. If there are jobs left, the positions are mostly taken of names we can not pronounce or we can’t spell and the first that the President’s name became foreign. What it is after nine years is the thousand years old religious war was brought in the heart of America now that we have to decide to burn the Koran in response to the building of the Mosque near the ground zero. Sadly to say, that we forgot that America was built for our Christian freedom. As the lady of liberty still holds her torch… "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" God Bless America!
MATA-HAJI
Since I came back in Okinawa last summer of 1990 everyone I know seems to be interested about the 82 days of Okinawa Campaign. If you talk with anyone about it, it makes you feel like you are being heard. They actually listen to you, so I bring myself down to their level. And they would greatly pleased to met such a sensible little oriental lady.
MATA-HAJI: Jewel of the East The most renowned woman in spy history--although she probably wasn't one. She was naive and easily duped--and trapped--by her "fate" as well as her enemies during World War 1. Reincarnated in Osaka, Japan 10 years after being executed by a French Firing squad. Aya Yamaguchi was born to a well-to-do Samurai ancestry. Her mother was of German ancestry a second generation of her family in the United States. Her father who was Japanese met her mother in a University in California as an exchange student. Aya attended homeschool due to being discriminated as a half child. She was also forced to having sex with the headmaster. Aya was flawless in German, Japanese and English. At age 18 she married a Kamikaze Pilot who vanished the next day after their wedding. She soon met General Taira who just came back from Manchuria and went with him in Okinawa in 1944. They soon moved to Shuri Castle in the Japanese Army Headquarters. She went to the Philippines while staying at the Manila Hotel she fell on the stairs and had amnesia. She assumed the name Mata-Haji and the persona of a Geisha. She had several affairs with the Japanese officers and passed secret information to American officers. When the Philippines was liberated from the Japanese in 1945. Mata-Haji was invited to Okinawa by the Americans as an interpreter. While swimming in her birthday suit at the Item Pocket at Machiminato she dove under and a big explosion was seen. The blue water turned red and the Eye of the Sun, disappeared into the East China Sea. Until now the Yamaguchi family has been lobbying for Mata-Haji's heroic recognition. As a Japanese citizen she was considered as a traitor and the U.S. government can not give her any recognition because she declined to be a U.S. citizen.
Talking Sweet Potato
Email: ctaira@sunny-net.ne.jp
Copyright © 1995 Formerly [Okinawa by Land Okinawa by Sea]. All rights reserved.
POW/MIA Ishigaki Island WW II Memorial
Fifty five years have passed and we are still finding and bringing home remains of our boys who fought and died in the 82 days of war in Okinawa, but there are three aviators who will never make it home. The three american soldiers who were captured, tortured and executed on Ishigaki Island on April 15, 1945.
Lt. Vernon L. Tebo * Robert Tuggle Jr. * Warren H. Lyod
Narrative:
Two weeks after L- Day, three American airmen parachuted onto an Ishigaki Beach after their Grumman Avengers were shot down or ran into trouble. They found themselves swimming to a coral reef where the Japanese Imperial Navy awaited. They were immediately captured and interrogated. The commander of the island's naval garrison, which had suffered casualties in an American air raid the previous day, ordered holes dug near his headquarters. Two prisoners were delivered there by truck the same evening of April 15. Twenty-eight-year old Lieutenant Tebo, a high school teacher from Chicago before the war, and twenty-year-old aviation Ordinance, First Class Robert Tuggle from Ranger, Texas had been so badly beaten then they were unable to walk. Dragged toward the holes, they were bound, blindfolded and gagged. Captain Makuta, proud of his beheading skill acquired in China, swung his sword the moment Tebo was pushed to his knees. His body tumbled into the hole. The second swordsman won the privilege of being executioner after losing three of his men in the previous day's air raid, then spent hours proudly informing his men he'd been chosen. He managed to cut through only half of Robert Tuggle's neck, but sailors kicked the body into the hole. Then a second truck arrived with Warren Loyd, 24, of Long Island, NY,. Because of his strict adherence to an unwritten CODE of CONDUCT, his death came in a more gruesome manner. He was announce to the town's people of Ishigaki to have been the "evil" enemy that has been bombing and killing their families. He was blindfolded and paraded through the streets of the Island, beaten and then tied to a stake. About thirty men of a howitzer platoon watched, because their officer had ordered all to be there. Two sergeants used sticks to beat the bound captive in the stomach. About a dozen more men followed suit, until the order was given to switch to bayonets. Some 50 men practiced on Lyod for half an hour under the supervision of officers who demonstrated the proper technique. To hide what happened, in September 1945 after Japan surrendered, the bodies of the three aviators were dug up and cremated and their ashes placed in fuel cans then sunk to the bottom of the sea near Iriomote, an island west of Ishigaki. But some of the sailors forced to watch the executions reported it to American authorities after the war. Of the sailors and soldiers who participated, 41 were sentenced to death as war criminals. Later some were pardoned and their sentences reduced. Seven Japanese officers were tried for war crimes and were hung. (These accounts have come from actual witnesses of the incident and from the book TENNOZAN (page 389) by George Feifer)
Talking Sweet Potato
Email: ctaira@sunny-net.ne.jp
Copyright © 1995 Formerly [Okinawa by Land Okinawa by Sea]. All rights reserved.
Lt. Vernon L. Tebo * Robert Tuggle Jr. * Warren H. Lyod
Narrative:
Two weeks after L- Day, three American airmen parachuted onto an Ishigaki Beach after their Grumman Avengers were shot down or ran into trouble. They found themselves swimming to a coral reef where the Japanese Imperial Navy awaited. They were immediately captured and interrogated. The commander of the island's naval garrison, which had suffered casualties in an American air raid the previous day, ordered holes dug near his headquarters. Two prisoners were delivered there by truck the same evening of April 15. Twenty-eight-year old Lieutenant Tebo, a high school teacher from Chicago before the war, and twenty-year-old aviation Ordinance, First Class Robert Tuggle from Ranger, Texas had been so badly beaten then they were unable to walk. Dragged toward the holes, they were bound, blindfolded and gagged. Captain Makuta, proud of his beheading skill acquired in China, swung his sword the moment Tebo was pushed to his knees. His body tumbled into the hole. The second swordsman won the privilege of being executioner after losing three of his men in the previous day's air raid, then spent hours proudly informing his men he'd been chosen. He managed to cut through only half of Robert Tuggle's neck, but sailors kicked the body into the hole. Then a second truck arrived with Warren Loyd, 24, of Long Island, NY,. Because of his strict adherence to an unwritten CODE of CONDUCT, his death came in a more gruesome manner. He was announce to the town's people of Ishigaki to have been the "evil" enemy that has been bombing and killing their families. He was blindfolded and paraded through the streets of the Island, beaten and then tied to a stake. About thirty men of a howitzer platoon watched, because their officer had ordered all to be there. Two sergeants used sticks to beat the bound captive in the stomach. About a dozen more men followed suit, until the order was given to switch to bayonets. Some 50 men practiced on Lyod for half an hour under the supervision of officers who demonstrated the proper technique. To hide what happened, in September 1945 after Japan surrendered, the bodies of the three aviators were dug up and cremated and their ashes placed in fuel cans then sunk to the bottom of the sea near Iriomote, an island west of Ishigaki. But some of the sailors forced to watch the executions reported it to American authorities after the war. Of the sailors and soldiers who participated, 41 were sentenced to death as war criminals. Later some were pardoned and their sentences reduced. Seven Japanese officers were tried for war crimes and were hung. (These accounts have come from actual witnesses of the incident and from the book TENNOZAN (page 389) by George Feifer)
Talking Sweet Potato
Email: ctaira@sunny-net.ne.jp
Copyright © 1995 Formerly [Okinawa by Land Okinawa by Sea]. All rights reserved.
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