Edokko

In 1926 professional musicians Constantine Shaprio, born in Moscow, 1896

and Lydia Chernetsky (Odessa, 1905) met and married in Berlin, Germany,

after their respective families had suffered continuous persecution in war-torn

Russia, or the Soviet Union, as it was known after 1922.

With Hitler's national socialism on the rise, remaining in Berlin was for the

newly-weds out of the question and they decided to continue their odyssey, first

to France and Palestine, then China, to ultimately spend the World War II years

in the relative safety of Japan.

In 1931, Isaac, son number four and author of this memoir, was born. A few

years later, with World War II imminently looming, and the subsequent

bombing of Pearl Harbor, their lives were disrupted once again.

In 1944, the Yokohama shore was banned for foreigners and the Shapiro family

including their five children, were forced to move to Tokyo, where they

survived endless hardships, among others the intensified strategic United States

bombing campaigns on Tokyo. Operation Meetinghouse started March 9, 1945

and is regarded as the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.

The Japanese later called the operation the Night of the Black Snow.

During the subsequent American occupation of Japan, 14-year-old Isaac, being

multi lingual, was hired as an interpreter by John Calvin 'Toby' Munn, a United

States Marine colonel, (later promoted to Lt. Gen.) who, when the war was

over, paved the way for Isaac, or Ike as he soon became known, to immigrate to

the United States. In the summer of 1946, Isaac landed in Hawaii, at the time a

United States territory, altering the course of his life forever.