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Helping my daughter in law find her family.

alan

後輩
20 Nov 2013
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My daughter in law was adopted by a US Navy family at Misawa Air Base in 1983. She was born in Aomori city and her name was Akiko Toki. Her adopted parents will not turn over her paperwork from the adoption. So we have limited info. I have someone currently trying to see if she can find a birth record in Misawa and Aomori. It seems more complicated that I first thought.
Apparently there are no actual birth certificates, its a family register that your name is added too? Then if adopted you are deleted from the family?

I set up a FB page with some pictures and a couple comments. I tried to contact a few "Toki's" from Aomori City hoping they would look at the pictures and make comments but it failed so far.

Just trying to figure out how to proceed with this. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Alan
 
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Bad news.
The ward office / city hall said they can not even begin the search without her original home address.
I was sure we would get somewhere with this.

So any ideas?
----------------
OK, how about this..
I found 6 Orphanages in Aomori, 0 in Misawa. Of those I wonder how many were open in 1983.

http://japanorphanages.org/orphanages/orphanages aomori.html

If asked would they give out information?
thanks Alan
 
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No news yet on the orphanage search.
I did figure out how to use Google to translate Japanese web pages.

I have noticed that in 2 days there are almost 60 views. :)
Does anyone have any advice, comments good or bad?

I have noticed some of the posts on here are 10+ years old with no answers. It must be very hard to find people in Japan, much more than I originally thought.
At the same time heart breaking for a lot of people. I read through few.
Thanks.
 
Well not so good news again.
It seems that orphanages will only release information to my daughter in law in person.
So I have asked if its possible a lawyer could do it.
Anyone have any comments? Has anyone on here gone through this ?
Any suggestions, good, bad or indifferent?
Alan
 
I'm afraid I have no idea, and probably no one else that has read the thread has any idea either. This forum is usually pretty helpful even with things that aren't directly language related. The lack of replies suggests nobody that has read your posts so far knows anything useful. Without adoption papers and so little information, it's going to be tough, but best of luck to you.
 
SomeCallMeChris,
OK thanks for your post! I figured it was something along those lines.

Well I will try and update this post as I find info and basically log it all if possible. That way the next person can see what they are up against.
There just is not much on tracking down families in Japan.
Too bad my daughter in laws family will not hand over her paperwork, that would make it much more easy.
 
Well she does have to be present to request her adoption paperwork.
It also seems that a lawyer will not help either, however she did not directly answer that question I asked twice.

On a side note.. the picture I posted on Facebook, the translator looked at it and said the mother in the picture is very likely the grandmother. Second Japanese person to say that. So that changes things up a bit.

I will have to regroup and figure out some other approach not involving airfare for a couple people!
 
Well she does have to be present to request her adoption paperwork.
It also seems that a lawyer will not help either, however she did not directly answer that question I asked twice.

On a side note.. the picture I posted on Facebook, the translator looked at it and said the mother in the picture is very likely the grandmother. Second Japanese person to say that. So that changes things up a bit.

I will have to regroup and figure out some other approach not involving airfare for a couple people!
 
Well not so good news again.
It seems that orphanages will only release information to my daughter in law in person.
So I have asked if its possible a lawyer could do it.
Anyone have any comments? Has anyone on here gone through this ?
Any suggestions, good, bad or indifferent?
Alan
Why doesn't she do so herself?

If it were me, and I wanted to know my roots, I wouldn't ask my father-in-law.

Sorry if this sounds rude, but it's a fair question.
 
Well when I met her one of my first questions was have you looked for your Japanese family?
She said my adopted parent will not turn over the paperwork to me. The other is she doesn't have money to do it.
I am bored out of my mind and have both time and money but no paperwork.
The family related issue can be made into a movie and I don't want to post them.
So I asked her if I could take a shot a trying to find them and she said yes. I think there is fear
of her adopted family and being rejected by her Japanese family.
 
So her parents have the documents, right? I guess getting that (even using a lawyer) is the first thing to do, for any country in that matter.
 
Thank you very much nnnaaa for your reply.

She has asked her adopted parents a few times to have her records and some other paperwork. When she goes to their house they start on other issues arguing and make her mad and she leaves. Even now they can drive by our house and drop them off, mail them or scan and email them, but they won't. If she pursued them legally they would just simply say they were lost when they moved in the military. I told my daughter in law to go visit them on the holidays and request them again and or get their email address and I will do it myself.

I found a translator and asked her to see if she could request her birth records. She wrote back and said the Ward office told her they require the daughter in laws original Japanese home address to see if they can find anything.

So I wrote the Translator back and asked if she can check the orphanages in Aomori City. I checked on Google and there are 6 listed.
She wrote back and said the orphanages require the daughter in law to be there in person to check.

I want to avoid paying $5000 to $6000 dollars for her to just fly over there and not find anything. I was hoping that there is a way to hire a lawyer to check on her behalf. I asked the translator this and she never answered directly.

So is it possible to hire a Japanese lawyer to check for her records?

Thanks again Alan
 
There's a consulting service here, for your information. Your translator can maybe contact there, and ask them whether they can consult through e-mail. The general procedure will be to take this kind of first consultation which will generally cost from 5000yen/30 min. and then the lawyer will advice you how to proceed, which will include introducing you to some attorney, if necessary.

Legal Counseling for Foreigners?|?English?|?Tokyo?Bar?Association

nao

Or, wouldn't the Japanese embassy help you?
 
nnnaaa,

Thanks again.

She was adopted at 2 months old and is a US citizen, 30 years old now. I don't know if she can still claim or has dual Japanese citizenship? Interesting thought!

Is it possible to check with the Japanese embassy?

Thanks Alan
 
Well, you can try, at least. It is a Japan related matter, and she was born Japanese. At least they might have some idea of what to do.
As for the citizenship, she's been adopted by the US navy family which means they left Japan to US as a US government organization worker, so there should be some proper standard procedure in handling such adoption in your government (and between our country). You can ask around that area, as well.

Good luck with your search.
 
Thanks.

I found this....

(Acquisition of nationality by birth)
Article 2.

A child shall, in any of the following cases, be a Japanese national:
(1) When, at the time of its birth, the father or the mother is a Japanese national;
(2) When the father who died prior to the birth of the child was a Japanese national at the time of his death;
(3) When both parents are unknown or have no nationality in a case where the child is born in Japan.

So she may actually be a dual citizen then.
 
The last posts I was commenting from the general point of view, but quick google search shows that Japanese baby adopted to US family follows some relating laws. These laws seem to have changed in the last 2,3 decades, so I am not sure what happened when your daughter-in-law was adopted, but you can ask the Embassy or her national registration office about that.
In the present system, upon adoption, the US family proceeds to create an American registration record for the baby, and then report that to the Japanese registration office with a certificate from the US government. That will sort of close the Japanese registration of the baby, in which sure has the name of the actual parents. If US registration office in some way keeps track of these process and can lead to the original Japanese registration, then logically you may be able to trace back to the actual parents.
I believe the information regarding the individual registrations can be accessible from the individuals themselves. I understand that is the basic human right to know such things, so she has a registration record in US, so starting from there, some of your local government officers might help finding extra documents, I hope. Or Embassy. They may not have the answer, but they will be able to provide further way to proceed, I believe.

nao
P,S. it is also stated here that the adopted child from JP to US naturally has the Japanese nationality.

ref)
手続と国籍・戸籍の変動(養子縁組) (Only in Japanese)
 
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My son called the Japanese consulate in Atlanta. They told him she is no longer a Japanese citizen after the adoption. They said they need to mothers name to find her records.

I have exchanged about 4 emails with her adopted family tonight over her paperwork.
They wrote very long emails about the mother was mentally handicapped and the father ran away after she was pregnant.
Another guy was going to marry her so she had to let the baby go because she was 44 years old.
Some guy help them adopt the three girls and everything was fine.

The picture they told us was her mother, I said she looks about 55, they now say no its her great aunt.
At the end of this they said this is my son causing trouble and the adoption was legal.

So my final reply was you know you have a legal obligation to turn over her paperwork to her. This has been brought up before.
Yet tonight you never mentioned to turn it over to her. I would have simply said here is you paperwork go find them and you will see what kind of monsters they really are.

Out of this exchange, no mention to turn over the paperwork came up. Lots of diversion off the topic non sense was used.

Well actually I am probably not qualified to understand what is the rational for their actions are.

I probably over stepped my bounds a bit, these things get you emotionally wound up a bit. Only a small tid bit of information I could have this solved.
I am drained fro yesterday!
 
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I was now given hopefully the mothers name Seiko Toki.
I was also given the name of the guy who helped with the adoption as Takinasawa.
Which does not appear to be a surname.
The latest story is Akiko's adoption was handled by this guy Takinasawa and Akiko was never in an orphanage.
Takinasawa was some kind of go between that arranged the hand over / adoption of Akiko.

Does this name Takinasawa mean anything? Could it be two names written together?
Could it be a miss spelling maybe one letter is incorrect?

Going with what was sent to me and some insight from SomeCallMeChris, I will guess the name is Takina Sawa. He was an older man at the time of the adoption in 1983. He could have been a lawyer. He was known to help people out with adoptions in the Misawa / Aomori area.
 
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Should it not be possible for her to search for information through the US Navy?
There should be records of a family stationed in Aomori who came there as two but left as three. I don't know how the US navy works, but it should be kind of awkward if no questions were asked when someone all of a sudden had a japanese child to bring back home. Maybe they were asked to provide some kind of paperwork to confirm that they had adopted the girl in a legal matter? The Navy might still have some record of this.
Maybe she has already been down that road, but if not maybe that's your best shot while not actually being in Aomori.

Japanese people are very private about family matters, especially if it can be thought of as shameful, and this sounds like something that might fall under that category. I think the chances are slim to find out someting through a Toki family in Aomori without the girl herself standing on their doorstep with tears in her eyes. But there may be lots of people named Toki there, so she'd might have to bang on a few doors before getting somewhere.
 
I am trying every angle I can think of. We have several different stories about what was behind the adoption. None of them are good. However I do have a picture of her at age two sitting on the lap of a women during a visit. The adopted family says its her mother, several people looking at it say grandmother. So there was some contact even after two years by someone in the family.

Of course no one will like a mystery person show up on their door step, saying "hey I'm home"! But I say you put a child up for adoption they may come back.

As a parent it would haunt me the rest of my life.
 
I am with you. Adopted children will lost likely not be forgotten by the mother, nor should they, and she would probably be happy to see them. The rest of the family though... For the record the american parents might have their reasons to not give what information they have to their daughter, but it is kind of hard not to think they are being pretty mean doing what they are doing.

Anyway I hope you will be able to find her family and I am sorry I can't help with it. I will ask my wife about it and see if she can snoop around the net. Perhaps there is someone somewhere who can help people with things like this. Your daughter-in-law is not the only only one searching like this.
 
I have since found out the guy that helped out, Mr. Takinasawa was also known by the nick name of Mr. T. So that would mean to me that Takinasawa was likely his surname. He was an older man at the time of the adoption, so he likely is not alive. I am not sure still if he just helped out or was a lawyer. The adoption laws I believe changed in 1985, so it may have been much easier to adopt prior to that time. Supposedly he was popular with helping American family's adopt Japanese children in the Misawa area.

I am still waiting to see if I get any additional info through my daughter in law. I also asked someone at Misawa to try and see if anyone has every heard of this guy Takinasawa. Alan
 
Since I need her name in Kanji, how many versions of Toki can there be? Is there a way to search this?
I found this link Kanji for Toki | Free Kanji Translation | Japanese Characters for Toki
it show 11 different ways to come up with the name Toki.
Does this seem accurate or correct?
I guess I will search each one on Facebook and see what comes up.

My old translator from when I worked in Sapporo sent me this...

窶忱ナ?テイ

She said this is the most common Kanji for Toki.
Does anyone know what it means, just curious.
 
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Here is my latest brain storming idea... Since the Mormon Church does a lot of ancestry type work, I sent them a message seeing if I can get contact info for their Church in Aomori City. Fingers crossed again.
 
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