The Chikamori Legacy (The Sanitized Version)
Prologue - "Seeds of Dissent" Part I (Author's Note: "This is the clean, sanitized version with no links back to my blog - meaning no contraventions against rules) Vancouver, BC, Canada - 1988 ...
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Prologue - "Seeds of Dissent" - Part II
Luckily for Haruo’s mental sanity, he had a bulwark against the never-ending pressure his mother inflicted on him.
https://i.imgur.com/00NIE8p.jpg
His beloved friend, River…she was very much a tomboy; a fun-loving girl who enjoyed rough-housing with the other kids and taking long walks in the woods talking about stuff.. In elementary school her choice at recess was to play war with the rest of the boys rather than sit with the other girls and play with dolls. So she’d end up covered in dust from head to toe with the rest of the boys.
She was also not your generically pretty type of girl. Her facial features were angular with a strong jawline. And her mother kept her hair short in a pageboy cut so that she could keep it organized without it ending up in a mess. She was good-natured and empathetic and always willing to lend a helping hand. With other kids at school, making fun of her for her nose which seemed a bit too large for her face; it was her only sore point that would get her riled up enough to start a fight which from being tough as nails and from playing with the boys at school; she would win every fight she started and well, the ones she didn’t start either. She was no wilting wallflower. You didn’t mess with a McIrish.
Her crowning feature was her brown hair which if the light hit it right gleamed a bright golden-red. And Haruo was glad that she was his friend. She was the one rock he could lean on. And it seemed as if fate was destined to keep them together as she was his friend from elementary onwards and the years had brought them even closer.
https://i.imgur.com/WyBgMMe.jpg
River’s mom was a kindly, single lady who was trying to raise River on her own after her husband decided to bail on the marriage. River missed her dad, even though he hadn’t been owning up to his responsibilities. Her mother tried her best but it was hard being a single mother and trying to earn a living enough to support her daughter so it was nice that her daughter’s daycare nanny had put her onto her son-in-law’s family and helped to purchase a duplex to her daughter’s ever increasing ire when she was told to look into a duplex. But since Grandma Yumiko was fronting the downpayment, Mayumi Chikamori was not going to go against her mother’s wishes for her babysitting charge to not be taken care of. Besides Grandma Yumiko loved River like she loved her own grandson and would be livid if Mayumi mistreated River in any way shape or form.
https://i.imgur.com/SAtmjZd.jpg
Yasunobu was someone who wanted to work with his hands so he became a gardener. He was trying to get his cooking skills high enough to cook for the family since his wife was absolutely useless in the kitchen. Having grown up in Japan during the Second World War, he was of the opinion that life, if not lived, was wasted. He’d had to raise his own brothers and sister when they were young. His father had passed away when he was just six years old. Lugging bags of rice and sugar over the mountains during the war years just so that he could support his mother and her children. There was a sense of duty and responsibility to his family no matter how unpleasant the task. He had been dealt a lovely smelling pile of garbage when having to deal with his harridan of a wife. But he bore it with the patience of someone who had seen way too much hardship in his life. All he wanted was for his son to grow up responsible and understanding of the fact that no matter what adversity came down the turnpike that he would handle it with dignity and silence; just as he had.
https://i.imgur.com/kjpjSMN.jpg
Mayumi (nee Miyagawa) Chikamori was a different kettle of foul-smelling fish. She loved nothing more than to make others miserable. As a school-teacher, she had that ability and she wielded it like a finely honed weapon. She would give detentions out to everyone if they even asked her why she did something that seemed the slightest bit unfair to then. In her classroom it was her way or the highway. And frankly she preferred it that way, no backtalk, no insolence, in fact, the kids were lucky if they were even allowed to breathe.
What she hated was the parent-teacher inevitable confrontations. As she felt she was superior to anyone she felt she shouldn’t have to answer to anyone, even to a school district supervisor. She loathed them. Who did that two-bit paper-pushing bureaucrat think he was talking to? After all, Mayumi was a straight A academic whiz who could think and argue circles around anyone. In fact in her understanding, the whole world revolved around her. So why shouldn’t she get the benefit of being adored by everybody?
And this was poor Haruo’s lot in existence. He would never be able to exceed or even meet Mayumi’s expectations; so why even bother.
Most everybody in Haruo’s friendship circle was either older than him or younger than him. There weren’t very many girls who were his same age. Haruo wasn’t inclined to be athletic, however he found that the gym was one of the few places that most detested and it formed a refuge of sorts to the point where he was either there or doing homework or sitting at the piano playing. So he grew up wiry and well-muscled.
https://i.imgur.com/Lv99dfA.jpg
He was also very close with Bebe who was part Jamaican, part English-Canadian. Dorie, Bebe’s mother, had come from that lovely little tropical isle and that lovely little lilt in her voice. “How are you today…Haruo” was very comforting to an adolescent who was out of his element anytime he and Bebe got together to play. After all, Bebe and he were in the same grade.
This was the 80s and most schools had a majority of Canadian students with a European heritage. There was maybe one or two, perhaps at the most three or four Asians in the classroom out of a majority of Caucasian students and Bebe was of mixed descent being both Caucasian on her father’s side and Black on her mother’s side. In Haruo’s case his Asian schoolmate was his cousin Torao who was an year younger than him who was in the same class as River and perhaps the other two who were his maternal cousins which he hardly ever talked to. As long as his parents weren’t talking to them, he wasn’t talking to them either.
https://i.imgur.com/X9Pl6mi.jpg
The Chikamori family had laid down their roots in Vancouver in the late 1950s and well, they were going to have to live with the decision that they’d made.
The Miyagawa family were also longtime residents of Vancouver from before the end of the first decade of the 1900s. Torakazu Miyagawa had landed in Los Angeles, CA, USA in 1907 and made his way up the coast to settle in Vancouver, BC; his wife Yumiko came over in 1908. They had 4 children, one stillborn and three live-births through the late 20s and early 30s. When the war came to British Columbia in 1941 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in the U.S., the Miyagawas were sent to an internment camp in Slocan where they were housed for a while, then shipped off to a sugar beet plantation in Iron Springs in Alberta. What possessions they had were auctioned off by the government of British Columbia and they never saw a single cent back.
Everything they had post-war had to be built up from the ground up. From sheer pennilessness to a decent standard of living. At the age of 58, with all their possessions that he’d worked for gone, Miyagawa Torakazu, Japanese naming protocol, last name first, given names after; had to gambatte and put his nose to the grindstone to build up his family’s fortune from nothing yet again. Torakazu wanted nothing more than to have his children apply themselves to their studies and to have a better life than what he’d had; to make his sacrifices to make a home in Canada worth something.
Were they not Canadian? And not (insert Japanese perjorative). They’d professed their loyalty to King George VI and country and not to Hirohito but no one had wanted the slanty-eyed J- in Canada to aid in the war effort against Imperial Japan. After all, a J- is a J- and nothing more.
https://i.imgur.com/Jlno7CY.jpg
After all he’d endured in the internment camp, Torakazu had wanted nothing to do with the hakujin woman and child his wife took into her care. But for all the suffering that Yumiko had underwent in Slocan and Iron Springs, her heart hadn’t grown hard and intolerant like her husband’s.
https://i.imgur.com/AWSLV7E.jpg
Yumiko loved the little girl who she babysat with all her heart and she fawned over River as much as she had done with her own grandson. She smiled seeing the two toddlers together as they grew up together, reaching their teen years, which with good fortune she had been able to see, unlike her husband who had passed away when Haruo was eight years old, seeing just how close they were (they always seemed to gravitate towards each other) and often wondered if the two of them would find each other (in the romantic sense) eventually, they were one soul according to what the Buddhists referred to.
https://i.imgur.com/LHb1dRf.jpg
Grandma Yumiko prayed for such a union between the two. Despite Torakazu’s snort of derision for even coming up with such a thought, Yumiko had held out hope.
If fate wished such a union, it would happen. All she could do was guide them to become the adults they would be in the future. Wasn’t there a song in the 70s that said exactly this: Love Will Find A Way?
Grandma Yumiko was a romantic.
But little did she know just how many twists and turns the road to happiness for her two beloved charges was going to have.
End Part II; End Prologue
Luckily for Haruo’s mental sanity, he had a bulwark against the never-ending pressure his mother inflicted on him.
https://i.imgur.com/00NIE8p.jpg
His beloved friend, River…she was very much a tomboy; a fun-loving girl who enjoyed rough-housing with the other kids and taking long walks in the woods talking about stuff.. In elementary school her choice at recess was to play war with the rest of the boys rather than sit with the other girls and play with dolls. So she’d end up covered in dust from head to toe with the rest of the boys.
She was also not your generically pretty type of girl. Her facial features were angular with a strong jawline. And her mother kept her hair short in a pageboy cut so that she could keep it organized without it ending up in a mess. She was good-natured and empathetic and always willing to lend a helping hand. With other kids at school, making fun of her for her nose which seemed a bit too large for her face; it was her only sore point that would get her riled up enough to start a fight which from being tough as nails and from playing with the boys at school; she would win every fight she started and well, the ones she didn’t start either. She was no wilting wallflower. You didn’t mess with a McIrish.
Her crowning feature was her brown hair which if the light hit it right gleamed a bright golden-red. And Haruo was glad that she was his friend. She was the one rock he could lean on. And it seemed as if fate was destined to keep them together as she was his friend from elementary onwards and the years had brought them even closer.
https://i.imgur.com/WyBgMMe.jpg
River’s mom was a kindly, single lady who was trying to raise River on her own after her husband decided to bail on the marriage. River missed her dad, even though he hadn’t been owning up to his responsibilities. Her mother tried her best but it was hard being a single mother and trying to earn a living enough to support her daughter so it was nice that her daughter’s daycare nanny had put her onto her son-in-law’s family and helped to purchase a duplex to her daughter’s ever increasing ire when she was told to look into a duplex. But since Grandma Yumiko was fronting the downpayment, Mayumi Chikamori was not going to go against her mother’s wishes for her babysitting charge to not be taken care of. Besides Grandma Yumiko loved River like she loved her own grandson and would be livid if Mayumi mistreated River in any way shape or form.
https://i.imgur.com/SAtmjZd.jpg
Yasunobu was someone who wanted to work with his hands so he became a gardener. He was trying to get his cooking skills high enough to cook for the family since his wife was absolutely useless in the kitchen. Having grown up in Japan during the Second World War, he was of the opinion that life, if not lived, was wasted. He’d had to raise his own brothers and sister when they were young. His father had passed away when he was just six years old. Lugging bags of rice and sugar over the mountains during the war years just so that he could support his mother and her children. There was a sense of duty and responsibility to his family no matter how unpleasant the task. He had been dealt a lovely smelling pile of garbage when having to deal with his harridan of a wife. But he bore it with the patience of someone who had seen way too much hardship in his life. All he wanted was for his son to grow up responsible and understanding of the fact that no matter what adversity came down the turnpike that he would handle it with dignity and silence; just as he had.
https://i.imgur.com/kjpjSMN.jpg
Mayumi (nee Miyagawa) Chikamori was a different kettle of foul-smelling fish. She loved nothing more than to make others miserable. As a school-teacher, she had that ability and she wielded it like a finely honed weapon. She would give detentions out to everyone if they even asked her why she did something that seemed the slightest bit unfair to then. In her classroom it was her way or the highway. And frankly she preferred it that way, no backtalk, no insolence, in fact, the kids were lucky if they were even allowed to breathe.
What she hated was the parent-teacher inevitable confrontations. As she felt she was superior to anyone she felt she shouldn’t have to answer to anyone, even to a school district supervisor. She loathed them. Who did that two-bit paper-pushing bureaucrat think he was talking to? After all, Mayumi was a straight A academic whiz who could think and argue circles around anyone. In fact in her understanding, the whole world revolved around her. So why shouldn’t she get the benefit of being adored by everybody?
And this was poor Haruo’s lot in existence. He would never be able to exceed or even meet Mayumi’s expectations; so why even bother.
Most everybody in Haruo’s friendship circle was either older than him or younger than him. There weren’t very many girls who were his same age. Haruo wasn’t inclined to be athletic, however he found that the gym was one of the few places that most detested and it formed a refuge of sorts to the point where he was either there or doing homework or sitting at the piano playing. So he grew up wiry and well-muscled.
https://i.imgur.com/Lv99dfA.jpg
He was also very close with Bebe who was part Jamaican, part English-Canadian. Dorie, Bebe’s mother, had come from that lovely little tropical isle and that lovely little lilt in her voice. “How are you today…Haruo” was very comforting to an adolescent who was out of his element anytime he and Bebe got together to play. After all, Bebe and he were in the same grade.
This was the 80s and most schools had a majority of Canadian students with a European heritage. There was maybe one or two, perhaps at the most three or four Asians in the classroom out of a majority of Caucasian students and Bebe was of mixed descent being both Caucasian on her father’s side and Black on her mother’s side. In Haruo’s case his Asian schoolmate was his cousin Torao who was an year younger than him who was in the same class as River and perhaps the other two who were his maternal cousins which he hardly ever talked to. As long as his parents weren’t talking to them, he wasn’t talking to them either.
https://i.imgur.com/X9Pl6mi.jpg
The Chikamori family had laid down their roots in Vancouver in the late 1950s and well, they were going to have to live with the decision that they’d made.
The Miyagawa family were also longtime residents of Vancouver from before the end of the first decade of the 1900s. Torakazu Miyagawa had landed in Los Angeles, CA, USA in 1907 and made his way up the coast to settle in Vancouver, BC; his wife Yumiko came over in 1908. They had 4 children, one stillborn and three live-births through the late 20s and early 30s. When the war came to British Columbia in 1941 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in the U.S., the Miyagawas were sent to an internment camp in Slocan where they were housed for a while, then shipped off to a sugar beet plantation in Iron Springs in Alberta. What possessions they had were auctioned off by the government of British Columbia and they never saw a single cent back.
Everything they had post-war had to be built up from the ground up. From sheer pennilessness to a decent standard of living. At the age of 58, with all their possessions that he’d worked for gone, Miyagawa Torakazu, Japanese naming protocol, last name first, given names after; had to gambatte and put his nose to the grindstone to build up his family’s fortune from nothing yet again. Torakazu wanted nothing more than to have his children apply themselves to their studies and to have a better life than what he’d had; to make his sacrifices to make a home in Canada worth something.
Were they not Canadian? And not (insert Japanese perjorative). They’d professed their loyalty to King George VI and country and not to Hirohito but no one had wanted the slanty-eyed J- in Canada to aid in the war effort against Imperial Japan. After all, a J- is a J- and nothing more.
https://i.imgur.com/Jlno7CY.jpg
After all he’d endured in the internment camp, Torakazu had wanted nothing to do with the hakujin woman and child his wife took into her care. But for all the suffering that Yumiko had underwent in Slocan and Iron Springs, her heart hadn’t grown hard and intolerant like her husband’s.
https://i.imgur.com/AWSLV7E.jpg
Yumiko loved the little girl who she babysat with all her heart and she fawned over River as much as she had done with her own grandson. She smiled seeing the two toddlers together as they grew up together, reaching their teen years, which with good fortune she had been able to see, unlike her husband who had passed away when Haruo was eight years old, seeing just how close they were (they always seemed to gravitate towards each other) and often wondered if the two of them would find each other (in the romantic sense) eventually, they were one soul according to what the Buddhists referred to.
https://i.imgur.com/LHb1dRf.jpg
Grandma Yumiko prayed for such a union between the two. Despite Torakazu’s snort of derision for even coming up with such a thought, Yumiko had held out hope.
If fate wished such a union, it would happen. All she could do was guide them to become the adults they would be in the future. Wasn’t there a song in the 70s that said exactly this: Love Will Find A Way?
Grandma Yumiko was a romantic.
But little did she know just how many twists and turns the road to happiness for her two beloved charges was going to have.
End Part II; End Prologue
