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.
