From the Land Down Under to the Rising Sun

Continuing the story of the move to Tokyo. For a little timeline context, the move from Kobe took place late in the summer of 1968. Last post Milton went into great humorous detail about the house we moved into. In contrast to Kobe, it was a tiny box with three feet of backyard. A big adjustment for us all. But they strategically picked a home that was geographically between the school where the children attended and where Mom had enrolled in a university.

Milton:

June enrolled at the International Christian University. She slipped back into academic life after raising a family, just as easily as a fish slips off the deck of a yacht back into the ocean.

Dearest Mum, The I.C.U. campus is a rare piece of green in a busy crowded city. I love it. 

Milton:

During that first winter, one Saturday Mary and I drove up to the slopes of Mt. Fuji. We parked the car and struck out through the snowy whiteness as if we were adventurers headed for the North Pole.  We made a snow man up on a secluded plateau where no other human would probably come until the spring. We ate our lunch in a summer shed that hundreds of climbers would use next year. 

Like Peter and James and John on a far more wonderful mountain experience, I didn’t want to come down from Mt. Fuji. But the sun dipped to the west and the icy wind edged us gently toward the warmth of the car. Smoke lifted lazily from the houses on the shores of the lakes below and the sunlight shimmered off the water. Cars streaked along the highways and byways; society moved on like a clockwork army and I knew I had to go down and figure out my next move in the inevitable journey.

Mary:

The following few paragraphs from Dad don’t have any images to go along. But it is a fascinating narrative so I hope you read it in full. It touched me that in a moment of questioning his next moves, God used an unannounced visitor in determining Milton’s next chapter.

Milton:

One morning, I sat in the kitchen alone. June was at her university class and the kids were battling their own battles behind desks at school.  Stan had been caught up in the Jesus Movement and was on fire for God and that was thrilling. The impact of our sudden uprooting from Kobe hit me like a delayed timebomb. I couldn’t settle down. I had recently accepted an invitation to hold crusades in Taiwan and that had been thrilling but “what now?” was the question on my mind.

Someone rang the front doorbell, and I stepped down into the entrance and opened the door. A broad smile radiated across the face of a little old lady and a voice that sparkled like the smile said:

“I’m Mary Oya, how are you?”

The springs of my memory let loose. I invited her in, and we sat around the same old dining table that had come across the seas in a shipping container with June and me on our first journey to Japan.

 Mary Oya had a fascinating background. She grew up in Indonesia to a Japanese father and a Chinese mother.  She attended an exclusive Dutch university. She spoke Indonesian and Dutch. She spoke Chinese with her mother and a little Japanese with her father. Her mother died and her father took on a new Japanese wife sight-unseen. The new mother didn’t like Mary. Later as World War 2 intensified, Mary’s father urged Japanese to send their families back to the safety of the homeland. So as an example, he sent his family first. All at once, Mary lost the land she loved, lost her father and became an alien in Japan with a stepmother who didn’t like her.  She studied Japanese language at Waseda University in Tokyo to break into the new culture.

After the war she worked for the US Army as she had also mastered English during her University days. She married a young Japanese doctor who it turned out only needed her to help get her research from the military hospital and to translate hard to get English publications. Once he gained his academic goal of becoming a professor at Tokyo University, he tossed her aside and took up with a beautiful cabaret hostess.

Years ago, while we were still living in Kobe, I had come to Tokyo for a two-day conference. I encountered a ragged runaway on the grounds of Waseda University. I gave him food during the two days I was there. Years later I heard that he miraculously found his way to Mary Oya’s home but did not know the full story.

Mary went into the streets of Yokohama and rescued children thrown away by busy cabaret hostesses. She called her home “Aunt Mary’s Nest”. She spent her own money to feed her brood. She would not call it an orphanage nor accept gifts. It was their home and if she needed money, she would work for it.

Now, here in our Tanashi home, Mary filled in some of the missing details.

Not many months after I had encountered him, Arvid ran away from his father and the beatings. He jumped on a train to get out of Tokyo and wound up miles away on the other side of Yokohama, in Ofuna. It was midnight. Stepping off that same train was a student from Waseda University. Out of the thousands of students at Waseda University, this one happened to know Arvid.  He saw Arvid and took him to his own aunt’s house: Aunt Mary. She would go on to fight for him in the courts. Nothing but the hand of God could have worked out the moves in Arvid’s story. He started school for the first time at twelve years of age but would go on to graduate as an honor student.  

Mary looked across the table with a gleam in her eye. “He is studying Medicine at Texas University” she laughed.

After Mary Oya had left our house, I sat at the kitchen table alone, but I was fired up with a new purpose. If I had had any thoughts that circumstances or environment that controlled my destiny, I lost those as this little lady talked. I knew for the next part of my journey, I needed to learn some lessons. The long interval between when I last was in school and began to live by experience was over; I had to study again. So, I applied to enter the International Christian University where June had enrolled.

June had her transcripts in perfect order; she had every right to enter the university. My life had slipped away in the coral islands and on the deck of sailing ships or in the grime of oil-splashed factories. So, I submitted my old records and waited. At that same time Tokyo was being rocked by university student riots. Some universities were closed and during the summer American high school students who might have remained in Tokyo and attended the international university, went back to the USA rather than wait for the siege of riots to lift.

Milton

Whether the uncertain times reduced the number of non-Japanese applicants or whether the authorities were fascinated by my age, I don’t know but I was accepted. To me, it was a near miracle. In future years the entrance exams became much more rigid. But that year I was given a written essay exam and an interview. Once I was enrolled, I found that my years of experience gave me a head start over other students on most of the subjects I took.

On enrollment day, I drove down the cherry tree avenue, past the playing fields where I knew the compulsory physical education program would have me running the 2000-meter course and playing soccer. I parked the car and walked along the high metal fence that had been constructed around the main buildings during the summer. Riot police rested under the trees with their shields and helmets at their side.  Inside all was quiet. I sensed I had come to short stop in my journey. Here I could study something deeper about my fellow humans before moving on.

I walked to the office to fill in the admission papers.

Name: Milton Wayne

Address: 1-17-2 Mukodai-cho, Tanashi, Tokyo.

Then the inevitable question on all Japanese forms. Age: 50

I picked up my briefcase and walked down to the next counter to pay my freshman fees.

Mary

Dad went on to get his Bachelor’s degree but Mom who relished studying continued on and got a Master’s in Psychology. (Pretty sure she did a second Master’s later in Sydney) I am not 100% sure if the picture below is from her getting her Master’s but that is what I think it is. Dave is visible in back row, I am hidden by some people. 🙂

Mary:

Oddly, it never dawned on me as a kid that Dad might be nervous about being and “old” student. Afterall, for me anyone who was out of high school was “old”. Their ICU life spilled over to the family as well. Sometimes we would drive over on Saturdays and use their tennis courts. I also remember occasionally on Friday nights Dad would take me to the campus for movie night. For some reason they had screenings of very old movies like Laurel and Hardy. Dad loved the Laurel & Hardy humor and it must have been a real trip down memory lane for him. Their movies were from the 1930’s and 1940’s.

As and International University, the courses Milton and June enrolled in were sometimes in English and some were in Japanese. Even though they both were very fluent in Japanese by this time, I remember they had to work on their academic vocabulary. I distinctly remember Mom’s flashcards balanced on the kitchen windowsill while she was cooking during this time.

June and Milton multi-tasked by being university students and growing the little home church in Tanashi. Here is a picture from a church picnic. Notice the guy in the middle establishing the key for singing…with a recorder. Raise your hand if you had to learn how to play one of those in junior high