rel="nofollow" href="#u8f399fcb-c409-5a16-9915-d84c50a8fe9d">20.Society in Japan
31.The ‘Katakana Prison’ and Mr Suzuki
35.The Japanese Crane – Bird of Happiness
36.Comfort and Solace with Ted
Dorothy Britton’s Published Works
Preface
MY LIFE has been so full of remarkable friendships that this book could have gone on and on. I wish I could have told about all of them. They usually had fascinating beginnings, too. The Australian actress Geraldine Ward was sitting opposite us on a train from Hastings to London, and was so mystified by Derek, in his father’s RAF blazer, who seemed unable to speak. She came to the conclusion he must have suffered a plane crash in the war and she started a sympathetic conversation. We became friends, and she used to visit us in Japan on her way to Australia, and we always got together when in London. Then there was the phone call from a Japanese secretary at the US Naval Base in Yokosuka, who knew I was the widow of an RAF air marshal, and thought I might be interested to know that a lady Captain had just arrived with a retired British air force commander husband. When I rang him, he said yes, he was a commander – but in the Royal Navy! ‘You sound English,’ he said. ‘Let’s meet.’ And Ted and Derek and I became very close friends of the interesting Balink-Whites, whom we visited in their home in Florida as well as in New Zealand where she was once posted – the only country which agreed to take a female naval attaché!
And there was a remarkable coincidence. A group of high school teachers from the USA came to my house to hear about my translating Japanese literature. When I had finished talking, and we were having refreshments, one of the women casually mentioned that her great aunt had been killed in the Great Earthquake in Yokohama. My spine tingled, and I asked if her name was Edith Lacy. Next day I took her to see the grave with our aunts’ names upon it. And then there was Edna Read, whom Paul Norbury, my wonderful publisher, asked me to meet to persuade her to write her own extraordinary Anglo-Japanese story.
And what would Derek and I have done without the Hoiseths? Our grocer all of a sudden introduced our neighbour Rodney who was in need of a blurb for his splendid book for learning English. We became friends, and eventually since they were unencumbered with children, he and his lovely wife Junko agreed to share my house with Derek and me after Ted passed away. I take Derek with me almost everywhere, but occasionally it is not possible, and since I do not like to leave him at home alone, it is marvellous to be able to ask the Hoiseths to keep an eye on him. Like my husband Boy, Junko has a ‘green thumb’ when it comes to plants and flowers, so thanks to her our tiny garden always looks lovely. And dear Rodney knows all about computers! We get along so well and feel like family. What a wonderful coincidence that Rodney needed that blurb! My whole life has been an example of how intertwined our karma is, and how one thing leads to another.
JAPANESE NAMES
Throughout this memoir I have presented Japanese names according to Western styling, that is, with the given name first followed by the family name. Also, for the sake of simplicity, I have avoided using the macron to mark the long vowel in Japanese words comprising an ‘o’ or ‘u’. I hope my scholarly friends will not be too critical of this decision!
DB
List of Plates
1Alice Hiller in Yokohama en route to Shanghai in 1920
2Frank Britton’s house in Yokohama, c. 1920
3Frank Britton’s enlarged and improved house in Yokohama
4Frank and Alice Britton enjoying making music together
5Dorothy Britton not yet two, with her aunt Dorothy
6A building similar to this came down in the earthquake and crushed Dorothy Britton’s aunt Dorothy and a friend
7Christ Church (after the earthquake), where Dorothy Britton had been christened
8Frank Britton’s office after the earthquake
9Kin-san – Dorothy Britton’s nanny
10Following the earthquake, the Britton house was temporarily used by a contingent of military police
11Dorothy with the Okubos in Hayama
12Dorothy’s fancy dress Valentine’s Day birthday party at the Britton house in Yokohama
13Dorothy aged c. six at the new house in Hayama
14Departing for England in 1935 on the Tatsuta Maru
15Dorothy with cousin Anna Rendell and her daughters Joan and Isabel
16The Butterfield’s sailing boat at Pitt’s Bay, Bermuda
17French composer Darius Milhaud at Mills College, California, in 1943
18Dorothy with the niece of the President of Haiti – the first black student at Mills
19Dorothy singing folksongs with her ukulele at a charity garden fete
20Dorothy with her Irish harp
21Dorothy back in Japan in August, 1949, with her mother and Mrs ‘TQ’
22The British Embassy, Tokyo
23Queen Victoria’s god-daughter Victoria Drummond
24Dorothy working on her cantata with librettist Elizabeth Baskerville McNaughton
25Dorothy interpreting Ikuma Dan’s talk about Japanese music for the Tokyo English