Laura’s grandma, Jon’s beloved O-Bachan, is thinking about moving. The house she’s lived in for the past 46 years is getting a little big for her now that she’s 94. She’s an incredibly tough lady who has lived a life of amazing challenges.

So Uncle Dave, Aunt Ann, Uncle Reg and Auntie Mich were in Toronto just before Easter to start the job of looking for a senior’s home. As things were being organized in the old house, there were some papers slated to be thrown out that were rescued by Auntie Mich. It was a 1960’s insurance envelope that had a couple of Japanese characters written in pencil on the back. Those characters turned out to be “Naturalization Papers”. Of the documents inside, only one is fully in English: Laura’s Grandpa’s Canadian citizenship certificate, from the 50’s. The rest of the documents were in Japanese, and all turned out to be from the 1960’s. All save one. That one is her Grandpa’s passport from 1920’s Japan.

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Since no one in the family can actually read Japanese, I sent scans of the documents to Erik (who teaches Japanese at Ryerson and U of T while he works on his PhD). He said that seeing the passport gave him chills, because everything on the document is plainly from the Empire of Japan. Apparently, most of these pre-war passports were destroyed in shame by their holders with the fall of the Empire. While not being something that you’d run to the Antiques Roadshow with, it is a fairly uncommon document, something that would have been kept only by those who still secretly supported the concept of empire, or by those who emigrated pre-war and thus couldn’t have cared less.

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