Discoveries

Day 41: I am so overwhelmed. Dizzy, dazed, mind-boggled, confused, I suddenly break into tears, my chest heaving with deep sobs from an emotion I fail utterly to understand and cannot name. Since yesterday's posting, a flood of information regarding my dad's incarceration in a Manchurian Prisoner of War camp has come to light. With the help of new friends and old, I have made contact with someone intimately connected with the men who shared my father's imprisonment and their families. I have been directed to half a dozen websites where more information about the camp can be read. I've learned which ship transported my dad and have discovered yet another misspelling of his name. More possible contacts have come to light, more sources for data. I have learned frightening things, too. My father's captors had issued an order to "kill them all and leave no trace," and but for the liberating forces arriving when they did and the Japanese mistaking the parachutists for their own troops, my father might not have made it home.

So much fills my hours and my mind today that I cannot think clearly, and yet I want to thank the people who have been a part of these revelations. How can I express to you what is in my heart tonight? Ruth, Patty, Alison...meet the man you are helping me discover.