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Namba Satsuya
Inland Sea Association in Support of the Lawsuit to Restore the Humanity of People who have had Hansen’s Disease
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▲Mr.Usami, second from left and Mrs. Namba, center
At the Welcome Party of Hansen's Disease Association
for The People in Aomori City May 2012
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How I met Mr. Usami Osamu
I became acquainted with Mr. Usami of Nagashima Aiseien through the lawsuit demanding the recognition that Japan’s Hansen’s Disease policy was unconstitutional and that the former patients be paid reparations by the Japanese government. I am a regular visitor to Nagashima Island because I am a member of the Kōmyōen Family Church of the United Church of Christ, Japan, located in the other Hansen’s Disease sanatorium on the island, Oku Kōmyōen. When the lawsuit was filed, I served as a representative of the “Inland Sea Association in Support of the Lawsuit to Restore the Humanity of People who have had Hansen’s Disease” and it was that capacity that I interacted with Mr. Usami.
After the lawsuit was over, I went to visit him in his room at Aiseien. He was disappointed because, although he was to be a member of the “Committee to Verify and Analyze Issues Concerning Hansen’s Disease,” he had no one to take him to the meetings. I was free that day and so I volunteered to take him. After that, I saw to it that he was able to attend the committee meetings, which were held in sanatoria throughout the country.
We talked about many things on our way to the meetings.
It started with talk of graves
When Mr. Usami passed the age of eighty, he started to think about his own death. Although until then he had always said that he had no choice but to have his ashes put into “Banreizan” (the Mount of All Souls), the patients’ mausoleum at Aiseien, one day he exclaimed, “I don’t want to go into Banreizan.” I pointed out that “Since your family has severed all ties with you, you have no other options,” but he said “It’s not what I want.” When I asked “Would you like to be put into the Namba family grave?” he said, “O.K., I accept.”
In order to avoid problems after his death, I asked him to write up a statement that “Mrs. Namba agrees to receive the ashes of Mr. Usami on his death” and send it to the Aiseien administration with a photo of my family’s grave. “Think this through carefully,” I told him, “You’re saying you’d rather sleep in the Namba family grave than in Banreizan with your comrades with whom you fought for human rights for more than sixty years, with whom you’ve shared laughter and tears. My mother-in-law is in my family’s grave. She was a proud person, so be sure to greet her properly!”
Then came talk of family
Though he seemed to be relieved to have settled the final resting place of his ashes, whenever I saw him he was thinking about his family and neighbors back home. “Before I die, I want to meet my nephew [the eldest son of his eldest brother]. My nephews don’t know anything about me. I was told never to visit my family’s grave. I was scolded for sending a memorial offering when my father died. My sister-in-law informed me that ‘now that Mother and Father have died, we are severing all ties with you.’ I am filled with feelings of remorse for the trouble I caused my family by getting this disease and I’ve resigned myself to this kind of treatment, but I would like to meet my nephew before I die. I was in bed upstairs when he was born and my grandmother brought him up to show me, though I wasn’t allowed to touch him. Shortly thereafter my brother and his family left the house and that was the last time I saw him.”
I took Mr. Usami’s grief to heart and wrote a letter to his nephew. “As the matter of the grave has been settled, please come just to talk about the family and the old neighborhood. There will be no trouble or commotion for you. There will be no dramatic reunion scene captured by the mass media. You can slip in and slip out. I would like for Mr. Usami to be able to leave this world in peace having met his nephew.”
His nephew is a great man!
When I asked Mr. Usami for the address, he could not remember all of the numbers and many place names have been changed in recent mergers of towns and villages, but I wrote what I had on the envelope and put my letter inside. The postal clerk assured me that “even though some numbers are missing and the place name might be wrong, it’ll still get there.” Even if his nephew were to find a name he didn’t know on the envelope and write “Refused. Return to sender” and send it back, it would still have been something. Instead he sent a reply. “I’ll come.”
I called Mr. Usami right away. “He says he’s coming!” “Really? I’ll believe it when I see it.” He kept repeating that right up to the day his nephew was to come.
Mr. Usami’s nephew got off the train at Okayama Station carrying a heavy sack of rice for me. “Welcome! Welcome!” I greeted him and then we set off in my car for the 40km trip to Nagashima Aiseien.
Standing and Crying
“You look just like my big brother!” “Pleased to meet you. You’ve had this photograph of Grandmother and Grandfather on display here for more than sixty years?” He was looking at the formal photograph of Mr. Usami’s parents in kimono decorated with the family crest. Mr. Usami was so excited, asking as fast as he could the names of all his other nephews and where they live and what they do.
We went out to eat and everyone seated around us must have been wondering what was going on as Mr. Usami was so excited and was loudly asking his nephew about relatives and neighbors he could not have known. “Uncle, you remember things so well,” he answered. Finally we went back to my house for an early birthday party for Mr. Usami. We had cake and talked more and then it was time to take his nephew back to Okayama Station.
On the way back to Nagashima from the station, Mr. Usami kept saying, “He came. He really came. I got to meet him.” When we talked about the hardships his family had endured, divorce and bankruptcy and so on, he would say “It’s my fault.” Even though I answered back to the effect that “Nothing that has happened to them is because of you. All kinds of things go on in the outside world. Everyone must work in order to eat. Sometimes things don’t work out,” he still kept saying that it was all his fault.
A time for everything
Actually, Mr. Usami’s nephew had found out about his uncle before I wrote to him. Here I will quote from a letter he wrote to me.
“I had heard from Grandmother that Uncle Osamu ‘died as a child from illness.’ …About six months after I became head of education, I heard from a board member who was in the Communist Party that ‘Mr. Usami Osamu is coming to give a lecture at the Regional Culture Plaza. He’s your uncle, right?’ In sixty years I had never heard anything from my grandparents or from my parents of an uncle who was sent to Nagashima Aiseien for having Hansen’s Disease. Thinking of my parents’ and grandmother’s feelings, I held back my tears in front of the board member. What I found out later was that the only ones who did not know of my uncle’s existence were my wife and me. I felt I must go right away to meet him, but I agonized over going. I couldn’t talk to my wife about it either. As I was head of education, I wanted to escape from becoming fodder for politicians and the media. I was afraid of it being made public.”
After Mr. Usami’s nephew had returned home from meeting his uncle, I received another letter from him.
“I read Grass on the Wayside [Mr. Usami’s autobiography] in one sitting. As tears were welling up in me as I thought of the feelings of my parents, grandparents, and uncle, I read with an intensity I have not experienced in a long time.
“The letter I received from you, Mrs. Namba, gave me the courage to go to Aiseien to meet him. I will take this opportunity as a human being to study again the consciousness that underlies discrimination. I will ask about the parts of Usami family history I do not know and fill in the gaps. I am filled with pride to have an uncle who, supported by so many like you, stood up to the policy of absolute quarantine for Hansen’s Disease and worked so hard to bring to reality the lawsuit against the government and the reparations law. …When I had the opportunity to speak with the Mayor alone, I got up my courage and told him about my uncle with tears streaming down my face. I feel like all that was built up inside me is finally going away. Sometimes I am called on to give speeches and I want to give one with the title ‘My uncle had Hansen’s Disease.’”
What an amazing person. He is truly a great man. He prepared himself and went without hesitation to meet his uncle. What resolve! I was cautious about intruding into his life, knowing how politicians and journalists can tread insensitively on delicate matters of the heart and believing that families also have human rights and must protect themselves, but there is a time for everything and this was the time for Mr. Usami’s relationship with his family to be restored. I consider this the miracle of 2009. And all because of the courage of Mr. Usami’s nephew!
Mr. Usami’s nephew said to him, “Please be put into the grave of your ancestors when the time comes. Please come and pay your respects there.” Before the grave of his parents, Mr. Usami bowed his head in deep respect and stood there for a long time. His candles, incense, and present were properly offered at the household Buddhist altar.
(Translation : Gregory Vanderbilt)
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