When 94-year-old Californian John Ramsay was asked by his daughter-in-law if there was anything he wanted to do before he died, he said yes.
"There is a monument to my grandfather somewhere in Japan. I'd like to visit it," Shirley Anderson quoted him as saying nine months ago.
But at the time, nobody in the Ramsay family knew where the monument was or even much about what their ancestor, George Edward Oakes Ramsay, did in Japan.