A Young Man, a Ship, and the Life He Built
After getting back from a vacation to the Philippines and Korea (the Philippines was a visit to my husband’s family), I came home with that post‑travel urge to purge. I headed straight for my closet. Out went the old clothing (my daughter and nieces were ecstatic, as usual) and then I stumbled across a box I hadn’t opened in years.
Inside was my late grandmother’s photo album. The very old kind: black paper, brittle edges, photos hanging on by those tiny triangular corner holders. I lingered over my dad’s baby pictures and the formal family portraits, the ones where no one smiles but everyone looks determined.
Horii Family (circa 1937)
left to right:
George, Teru, Tadashi, Kiyoshi, Koheiji, Kazue
Join Me Weekly in the Slow Lane
Then I found photos of my dad as a young man, heading back to Canada on the Heian Maru. He was born in Vancouver, and going back to his country of citizenship in 1954; a time when Japanese Canadians were unwelcome, discriminated against, and often displaced. And here he was, scraping together enough money to get himself with his younger sister onto a ship bound for a country that didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat.
Passengers on the 1954 voyage to Vancouver, Canada.
As the eldest son in a family that had lost its father, he felt responsible for his mother and siblings. That sense of duty carried him across the ocean, into factory shifts, and eventually into the life he built with my mother, a picture bride he was introduced to years later. He worked double shifts, raised my sister and me, and brought his own mother, my baachan (grandma), over from Japan to help care for us. He had fulfilled what was expected of a firstborn son.
I’m very proud of my dad. Congratulations, George. Your life is a big success.
PS: George is now 93 and still very much himself — active in his karaoke and bowling community, cheerful, social, and endlessly amiable. He recently relinquished his driver’s license because of dementia, but his spirit hasn’t dimmed. He remains the happy, good‑natured fellow he has always been. He loves to entertain and make people laugh; I suppose that’s what I’m doing now, in my own way. (And yes, that’s absolutely where I get my cuteness from.)