I enjoyed the story about Miss World Japan's search for her American grandfather. In my own family, we had the same type of story. My uncle was in Germany in World War II; he was wounded and sent to a rehabilitation town. Even though he had married a couple months before leaving to fight in Germany, he met a German lady and they fell in love. During that relationship he was transferred to another location.
From that location, he was shipped home, but he had no idea that his German girlfriend was pregnant. When he got home, he couldn't bear to hurt his American wife by telling her of that relationship. He wrote the German woman and told her that she should go on with her life.
I am still not sure whether he knew that she had given birth to a daughter. Life went on until the mid-1990s, when a woman from Germany started e-mailing my cousin, the son of my uncle. My cousin asked me if I would e-mail her since I was the family genealogist. She claimed to be my uncle's daughter, having recently been told by her mother about the affair. I continued to e-mail her and talk to her over the years.
In 2008 my German cousin invited me to attend her daughter's wedding. I did and it was fantastic. My cousin and I even look similar and have so much in common. This year my cousin, her daughter, her son and her son-in-law came to Japan to visit me. I really hope that Elza Sasaki finds her grandfather's relatives.
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