HATSUME
My name is Bob Proctor When I first met Hatsume it was while I was on
R and R from Korea. It was in October 1954 and the R and R center
was in Camp Hakata near Kokura. They were having a dance at the
Service Club that night. I went in and saw the most beautiful woman
I had ever seen.
I went over to her and told her I wasn't much of a dancer but I would
try. She was one of maybe two dozen girls that the Army brought in
to dance with the men stationed and on R and R there. She said that
was okay she didn't feel much like dancing anyway. She worked for
a cosmetic company by the name of Tennessee Cosmetics. She had
been on her feet all day at a department store demonstrating the
use of the cosmetics.
We went into one of the other rooms and talked until time for the
girls to go back to their dorms. All of the girls worked for companies
in Kokura and had to be back to the company dorms by 10 PM.
So the dance lasted from about 7 PM to 9 PM. Before she left that
night I told her I was going to marry her. She just laughed but I
meant it . We saw each other everyday after her work and on her
day off. She gave me her mother's address and her mother
forwarded the letters to her. She was afraid to have me write
to the company address.
When I left Korea for assignment to Camp Otsu, japan In February
1955 I asked her to come to Otsu and I would set her up in a house
and send money to her mother every month until she could find
work. As it turned out she never had to go to work because the
rent for the house was cheep enough that I could take care of her
and send some to her mother also. We got married on March
19th a year later.
For a soldier to get married to a Japanese national at that time
was a long process. We started the process in mid September 1955.
There were many papers to be filled out and also a of papers to
get together. First you had to have your birth certificate. Then
you had to have a copy of her family register (there are two kinds
of these one the full family history and the other just the immediate
family record) the full family register is call a tohon the other
koseki-tohon. So her brother sent for the tohon first but it was
not the one we needed. So with getting the wrong one first
that took almost a month to get the right one. That had to be
translated from Japanese to English.
I took to the interpreter that worked in the signal office. She told
me it would take a few days as she would have to work on it between
official government jobs. In about a week she called and told
me it was ready and I could pick it up.
After we got all the documents we needed we started filling out the
form for the background check of Hatsume. There were 4 or 5
pages of information to fill out and a entry had to be made in each
category. That entry in some cases might be not applicable.
If more space was needed for any category you had to attach
a typewritten paper to the form referencing the section and
the question it referred to. That took about another month to
get all the information and fill it out.
Then you had to make an appointment with the chaplain to
get permission to marry. That wasn't a problem for us as the
chaplain knew Hatsume from her attending services in the
chaple. He gladly filled out the required form and signed
it and had his secretary witness it. He was also suppose to
counsel us on the things we should know before getting married.
He said "I am telling you marriage is a sacred union given
by God go in peace and a long happy marriage." That was the
counseling given to us I don't know about others as it was
done in private.
Then you had to get the permission of the Commanding
Officer. This might have been a problem as he was from the
south. I don't think it made a differance that he found out that
the Commanding General also knew Hatsume from attending
the same chapel services as we did. Anyway he did not hesitate
to sign the form that the company clerk had typed up giving his
permission.
By now it was the middle of December but I hadn't received
my birth certificate from Ohio yet. I sent them another letter
asking why I had't gotten it as I had sent in the application in
early October. The answers I got were they had to wait for the
money order to clear before they go make it up. Then they
had to search for the micofilm and transfer the information
to the offical birth certificate form and then the cheif clerk
had to sign and afix the Ohio State seal to it. I got both the
certificate and the answer in early Jaunary on the same day.
The answer had come by air mail and the birth certificate by
boat.
I turned in all the completed paper work to the Military Police
Office the first full week in January. I was told to expect it to
take from 5 to 6 months for it to come back. Both the
Military Police Office and we were surprised when it came
back in 6 or 7 weeks. When they called me and said my paper
work was back they didn't tell me if it was approved or disapproved.
I went to their office to pick it up and he asked when I turned it in.
I told him and he started searching in a large pile of returned
applications. He didn't find it there so he asked again when I had
turned in the paper work. The pile he was looking in was those
that had been disapproved or return for more information. Then he
looked in a small pile of maybe 10 or 15 applications. He said he
didn't look there first because of the short time between the
time I turned the application in and the time it came back. He found
it in that pile of approved applications the second or third one down.
I don't know maybe it was because Hatsume's brother was a
policeman in the near by city of Itami. Maybe because of this
they didn't check as close as the would check others. We do know
they came to him and asked if he had any objection to his sister
marrying a foreigner.
After the approval came back we had to set up a appointment
with the American Counsel in Tenoji one of the wards of Osaka.
To get the appointment we had to go to the Personnel Office to
have it set up. The Personnel Office clerks told me they could
not set up an appointment at that time as they were getting ready
for a change of command. They said when the 7th Cavary
Regiment took over I might have to resubmit my papers for
approval as the approving command was being deactivated.
The Southwest Command was still the command in charge at
the time. This was a Thursday and the new command would take
over on Monday March 19, 1956.
I told them I wanted to call General Zwicker and they could talk to
him. They said go ahead it wont do you any good the OIC said we
do no business until after the change of command. I called General
Zwicker's office and talked to his secretary Pat Owen. Pat was
my NCOIC's wife and the general had already to me if I had any
trouble with the Personnel Office to have them call him. After I
told them that I had the general's secretary and she wanted to
talk to them they decided they could make the appointment for me.
The earliest appointment we could get was the next Monday
March 19, 1956. I was suppose to be in the change of command
Honor Guard but got excused to go to the American Counselet
All the American Counselet did was to give us some papers in
Japanese to take to the Japanese City Office in Tenoji. Where they
took the papers in Japanese and gave us back some in English
to take to the American Counselet. When we got those back
To the American Counselet they gave us two copies of a marriage
certificate. By the time we got back to Camp Otsu it was too late to
get Hatsume's ID card and commissary cards for both of us
so we got the ID card and commissiary cards the next day.
We had to wait a month to be able to get an appointment for a
wedding in the chapel. The chapel ceremony was on April 20, 1956.
Chaplin Capt. Jinkens persided, SP4 King was my best man,
Setsuko Wakashiro was her brides maid and her brother Yoshiyuki
gave her away as her father was deceased. We were married for
just 2 months and 9 days short of 36 years. She was claimed by
cancer of the liver on January 10, 1992 at the age of 59.
Her welcome to the United States in April 1957 was a frightening
one. First I had to leave her a lone in Seattle and go to Fort Lawton
north of Seattle. I was gone for almost 6 hours. She stayed in a
hotel lobby. I gave her some money for lunch and a room if
necessary. When I got back it was early evening to late to start
the trip to Denver to my folks. We got a room and went to a
near by cafe for supper. While there the cook who was drunk
came out of the kitchen with a knife and threaten the manager
and was swearing. This so frighten her that we got up and left.
That was her welcome to the United States. After we got back to
the room she cried for over an hour. I assured her that it wasn't
like that everywhere. I couldn't make that assurance today.
After we got to my aunts in The Dalles, Oregon things had
settled down. My aunt and her husband loved her. The same
with my folks even my sister who was and still is a little stuck up.
Over the next 35 years we were stationed in South Dakota,
Germany, California and I went to Vietnam while she lived
with her mother in Japan. We adopted a boy in Germany.
When I got back to Japan from Vietnam all he spoke was
Japanese. Then we were stationed in Japan, Ohio and
back to Japan. I retired from the Air Force in 1976 and we
lived in Denver from May 1976 until her death in January
1992 at the age of 59. I continued to live in Denver until
October of 1997 when I moved to Tacoma Washington.
Hatsume's family
Rokuemon Terachi 1903-1948
Hatsu Terachi 1906-1969
Nobuyuki Terachi 1921-2001
Yoshiyuki Terachi 1931
Hatsume Terachi Proctor 1932-1992
Kaname Terachi 1935-1957
Toru Terachi 1939-1946
Tokiko Terachi Tsurumoto 1941
Katsuko Terachi 1945-1997
Children of the Terachi's
Hideki Tsurumoto Tokiko's son 1970
Takahiro Tsurumoto Tokiko's son 1972
Nobuhiko Terachi Nobuyuki's son 1965
Kaiyo Nobuyuki's daughter 1967
Gordon Proctor Hatsume's and my son 1962
I decided to go to Thailand in March of 2004. I gave her a ring and proposed to her while visiting her there. While there I had a accident in the bath room and had to go to the emergency room. For the treatment and the medicine it cost me about $20.00. That is a big difference for what it would have cost my insurance here and my co-pay would have been about $50.00.
