A Friend of Mine

Journal 3

For this week’s Cultural Immersion Activity, I decided to contact a lady that my friend knew well, and her name was Mori Constantino, I was told she was eccentric and interesting, and had been born in Japan.  She replied quickly to me and so we made plans to have lunch and to go to shopping places.  She gave me instructions to her house and nervously I went to meet her. 

A very short and stern woman asked the door, and with a bit of a raspy voice she said, “You must be Megan”.  She invited me in, my friend had explained to me that she was somewhere in her eighties, so I pictured someone much more feeble and weak, and I was amazed by her stagger and her manners.  Her hair was long and beautiful and tied partially in a traditional Japanese bun, with the bottom have of her hair let down.  Her home was very plain and very well kept, with just a few Japanese scrolls hanging.  She asked me politely if I minded if she smoked, and I had no problem.  As she lit her cigarette and inhaled she explained to me that she did not start smoking until she was 50 years old and that way she knew she would be able to continue smoking into her older years.  She started talking to me about her late husband, who had been 18 years older than her and an Italian man.  She continued to tell me about their two children and how they lived in California, and how they did not like her smoking.  At this point I was more relaxed and felt that this activity was going to be a lot of fun with her.  Her face was very luminous and bright and I remember thinking that I hope that I can be this cool into my eighties.  Mori continued on to explain how she had never worked full time, but rather was a stay home mother for her children and wife for her husband.  She told me how hard her husband, Anthony Constantino, had worked to make sure that she would be taken care of after he had passed.  She explained that she never worries about money, but she also never frivolously went out on spending sprees.  I told her I was fine if instead of shopping, we could hang out and talk and grab a bite to eat.  I was getting a lot of stimulation just hearing the main parts of her life and I was curious to know more about it. 

The more that I sat to talk with Mori the more enchanted I became of her life and what she had gone through.  She explained how she was born outside of Tokyo, Japan, and had lived in a small house with her three siblings.  She told me how tight the quarters were, and how that was one of the main reasons that she could not handle clutter.  She said they were not poor, just very tight and very strict.  One strict rule that she had and still had for her children was to not waste any food at all, this was forbidden in her eyes.  When she was about 8 years old, her father had found opportunity in American, and her whole family then moved together to the states and started in California.  She explained that she was indifferent at the time because she was so young, but remembers saying goodbye to close friends and family in Japan.  She said she looked up to her father and felt that he knew what he was doing with their family.  When settling in that states, she explained that there were prejudices that she had never before experienced, and that because she was so short and Japanese, that school had been awkward for her as she was learning the English language.  She had known a small amount of English prior, but now that she was living in the states she had to become fluent. 

She was so inspiring already in our conversation and it was interesting to continue to hear of her endlessly positive nature and her perseverance.  She said there were some dark moments that followed the coming to American, and that when she was about 12 years old, in 1942, her family was taken to a Japanese Concentration Camp near the mountainous regions.  She told me how her family had to pack and leave in one night as they were taken to what was called their new home.  At the camp, they were given a tight quarters, even tighter than she could remember in Japan, and she recalls being very frightened and homesick.  They were given plain clothing to wear, and her father and mother were given work, while she was expected to continue school with her siblings.  She said it was nothing like the freedom of California, and she could not understand how Americans could do this to her father and mother.  This is something that I could not imagine going through, and it made me re-evaluate my mellow upbringing, and to reconsider the things that I had grown to dislike or even hate.   To think of having to leave home one day with just a suitcase was unfathomable to me.  She explained how her days were long, and how their home space was cramped, and there was no stove, no heat, and no plumbing.  Her and her siblings where given odd jobs, while both of her parents would be working long days.  She said every night there family all arrived home together, how they cherished ever minutes, there were no needs, no complaints, no whining, just love and connection to each other in hopes of a brighter futures, and in hopes of normal living spaces.  It was a dark and dismal time for her family, and she could not understand what the Japanese had done to be taken off to these different camps.  In 1945, when she was 15 years of age, her family was suddenly released one afternoon.  She recalls being thrilled and joyful, not realizing at the time, how this experience of three years would come back to haunt her in adulthood.  She did, however, emerge with a better grasp of the English language.  Personally, I have never been so moved by a story, and I realize more and more how every human has a story, and how their story was one of exile and prejudice.  I realized that our lifestyles have been in our own hands, our own control, but to learn of how quickly a group or person could lose that freedom, all because of race. 

Mori explained to me that she has remained a kind person, and although through those times, she could not hold any grudges on the white man or any grudges inside herself.  She explained that she made that decision when she was 18 years, to not be angry about what had happened.  She explained though, how the memories of the experience did haunt her now and then.  Especially when it came to food and shelter, and inevitably there were scars, but she refused to let those scars define her.  She went to college in California, where she met her husband, from a family of great and kind people.  She explains how she was not interested in dating, but Anthony had won not only her love, but also the love of her families.  To me this is amazing, to still allow their daughter to marry outside of the Japanese, especially after what the family had been put through.

This is the types of perseverance I had learned from Mori, to see through it all and find the positive, to forgive and forget what you can, and focus on making a good life.  I have learned or figured there must be millions of stories of tragedy and hardship similar to hers, but how race could predetermine characters and their stories.  I felt sort of ashamed to be American, knowing how simple my life had been and how I had never had to worry about such things.  On top of this, I admired the family’s intimacy and love for one another.  In America it is easy to love touch with family values and it is easy to grow distant with all the different elements of daily life, but here is a story of a family and their love for one another that kept them strong and positive and got them through one of the greatest trials of a lifetime.  Material possessions lost all value, possessions lost importance, and this is something I truly admire and wish I would be able to handle if similar situations happened to me. 

Mori and I talked for hours, and we are staying in touch, and I have made a new friend with a powerful inspiring story that puts to shame our modern material lifestyles.  She showed me the eyes and soul of a spirit so wise and forgiving that she could skill show respect for other cultures.  The value of material objects seems like clutter and waste and I try to think of all of those things that I had often needed, or clothes that I have fret over, and I am reminded and learning through her essences that the important aspects of life come down to family and safely and I am forever changed as a young woman and hope that I can aspire to be as bold and positive a person as Mori Constatino in her 86^th year of life.  She has moved my heart and made me question judgments I have made and she has helped me to heal my own scars and wounds, and to find the grace and peace in forgiveness and forgetting.