Help Finding Japanese International Adoptee

I've wanted to write this post for several weeks, but other things kept getting in the way. More likely, it's a very sad subject for me because it brings up some frustration. But I need to get it out there, so here it comes.

I know a woman from a forum who, just like me, is the child of an adoptee from Japan and also an adoptive parent. She goes by "celebratewewill" on the forum. Her mother is the adoptee. C's mother is dying and C is trying to uncover her roots in Japan.

My father and her mother were both indirect victims of WWII. My father's bio father died on a battleship in the Pacific, his mother died shortly thereafter, and he was sent away to a family in a mountain village that could take him in. C's mother was found/abandoned/given up after the war. She was taken to an orphanage and adopted internationally by an American couple.

My father is 100% Japanese (though he may not be fully ethnic Japanese, but that's another story) both biologically and culturally. C's mother is mixed-race and was raised in America, and was not interested in looking back. What they both have in common is the stoic survivor mentality. The past is past, there's no use talking about it, suck it up and move on.

Being the child of an adoptee with this kind of perspective can be frustrating. We have a major gap in our history. As my father said once as he was in a poetic mood, "my family tree is withered".

To explore our past, we have to travel through our parent's trauma. Do we have the right? Is this partly our story, or does it belong wholly to them? It's hard to weigh all the ethical and emotional factors.

These frustrated yearnings wax and wane over a lifetime. At times of birth and death, they become especially powerful.

C's mother will soon pass away, and the link to her ancestors will become more tenuous.

Here are some details she provided me:

• The details I have are almost all verbal, and who knows how much as been added or subtracted. We do have a lot of "adoption papers" in Japanese, if i can find where they are hidden in my parent's house. Her papers have her name as Misao Okuno (I am going on memory only, I may have mispelled), dob 8-11-52.
• My dad says he remembers my grandpa (mom's dad) mentioning a "Reny Sawada" who ran the orphanage; he thought it was a Catholic orphanage, and they targeted Americans to adopt these children who were half Japanese. I found a Miki Sawada who fits this, the Elizabeth Sanders Home. But i'm thinking if she was just brought to the home by a stranger, no name or dob would be available. I don't know how often the children's mothers brought them directly to the orphanage; anything I can find is that these children were found on the street, sometimes dead. I don't know really how her original name and bday could have remained with her.
• My dad said that a few years ago, he contacted the japanese embassy and forwarded copies of all the papers they have. They couldn't figure out where she got her name (I don't know if that meant they did a search of her name and hometown, though, like you suggested). Next time I'm down visiting, I'm going to make copies of everything for myself.
• My dad does remember my mom's dad telling him that the orphanage told him she was Japanese/Portuguese. How they would have known that is beyond me, if she was indeed found on the streets eating out of the garbage, as the story goes. It would explain my brother's appearance, but perhaps more Brazilian since he's so dark-skinned.

Here's some advice I gave her:

• In Japan there are very detailed family records called koseki. Back in that time period, all facts of birth and adoption would be recorded in the koseki. Today, to access the koseki for the home region you would need to prove your relation and right to access it. I know this stuff in general but I don't write or speak Japanese so I can't help anymore than that. It's not certain C's mother would be in the koseki under that name. When my dad wanted to find out more about his biological parents, all he had to do was go to the koseki and look them up.
  
• I suggested that C get a genetic test. That could at least tell her the ethnicity of her mother's mother. There are millions of Japanese-Brazilians, many of mixed ancestry, but I can't recall circumstances of why they would actually be in Japan during the immediate postwar period. Perhaps for reconstruction work? I am going to ask my dad about that next time he's in town.
  
• Adoption.com is a site I would never recommend because of multiple ethical challenges and censorship issues. Nevertheless, it's one of the highest-traffic adoption sites on the web. At the forum there were several adoptees who said they were adopted from the Elizabeth Sanders home. I suggested that C contact them and see if she could learn from their searches.
  

If you have any suggestions or resources please post them here or email me. You could also contact C directly by registering with Adoption Threads and messaging "celebratewewill".