I only wish I had had this information when I was doing the book. Erina Ikuta lives in Chico, California:
My American grandmother was white. Her name was Lena Estella Worth. She remarried 2 times after my grandfather, Ikuta Zenjiro . She died at Washington State as Lena Moore. So my father is a half white and a half Japanese.
I was born in Japan and I am still a Japanese citizen. My father chose to be a Japanese citizen (He was born in the U.S.) when he turned 21 years old. Japan doesn’t allow dual citizenship and at the time he had no choice but to choose Japanese citizenship anyways, and he joined a Japanese Navy voluntarily. I believe he was sent somewhere in the South Pacific (the Philippines?). My father did not know about his father’s death until the war was over and he came back to Japan.
My grandfather had his own taxi business in Tokyo until Oct. 1930. Then in 1940, my grandfather, his second wife and their son (my uncle) moved to Saipan for the purpose of my grandfather’s health treatment. He had asthma.
According to Wakako-san, there is a record indicating my grandfather’s presence, as an interpreter, at the execution of an American pilot on July 13, 1944 (Possibly J.J. Perry?). But I am not sure if my grandfather was ever in the jail in Saipan. I don’t think anyone knows how he died.
BRUCE M. PETTY
New Plymouth, New Zealand
