How it Started

After my grandfather, Duke, passed away in 2012, my grandmother, Carolyn, discovered an Okinawan photo album in his Navy trunk. She learned from a close friend of his from the Navy, that he found it while storming the beaches during the battle of Okinawa and that he’d always intended to return it. Determined to finish what he couldn’t, she began a multi-year search for the family. In 2013, she succeeded, discovering that the album had been created by 14-year-old Mitsuko Sunabe, who tragically drowned during U.S. air raids. With help from new friends on the ground in Okinawa, Carolyn was also able to identify and connect with Mitsuko’s surviving relatives. In January 2014, she and several other family members traveled to Okinawa to meet the Sunabes and return the album to them. For Mitsuko’s relatives, the return was profound: nearly all records of her had been lost in the war. Iha Sunabe, Mitsuko’s sister, described it as “Some kind of destiny.”