Jean Tokuda Irwin
Salt Lake City Public Library
“I’m Japanese-American with a Japanese mom and a father who was a GI.”
The Japanese called children like me Konketsuji, or loosely translated, GI bastard child. I was one of the offspring of a a Japanese mother and an American GI during the post-war occupation years, in sort of a modern day Madama Butterfly story. I don’t know if my mother committed seppuko. I was left in a orphanage when I was three or four. Unlike Pinkerton, I don’t know if my father ever returned to Japan.
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