Today Need help finding the orphanage my Dad was adopted from in 1966

[SamanthaMaili]

Hello, my name is Samantha and my father is like 56yrs old now. He was adopted in Japan, when he was 2, so around 1966 from an orphanage in Aomori and brought back to the States. Unfortunately, his adopted parents didn't keep up with the US paperwork and let their citizenship lapse when they were still a minor.

So now that he's trying to get his US passport to actually travel to Japan this Christmas, he was told he'd need to apply for his green card, which would in turn make him a Japanese citizen but he's not a Japanese citizen anymore since he was legally adopted by an Airforce member.

Does anyone have any idea how I can get his family registry or adoption paperwork from the orphanage, if it still exists, WITHOUT him needing to be in person since he can't even leave the states now, him going in person is not possible anymore.

Any advice is greatly appreciated as I've been banging my head against a wall watching him deal with the US being USeless.

 

[nice gaijin]

Hi Samantha
So your dad was adopted in Japan and brought to the states when he was two... do you know anything about his status when he was first brought over? Did he come over on a Japanese passport or was this before people tracked small children or there's just no record? It sounds like his parents weren't on top of that stuff, so there might not be many answers forthcoming.

He has been living in the states his whole life, so it shouldn't have trouble proving that he's been here for long enough to qualify for naturalization, and possibly even the DREAM act's program, if that would be helpful. Japan would actually recognize his Japanese citizenship if he never renounced it, which might be the first step towards getting a green card. I know it must be disorienting for him, but that might be the easiest (?) Way to get documented somehow. Even so this might not be resolved in time for him to travel for Christmas.

You might have some luck contacting International Social Service Japan, they say they have records going back to 1952 and can help search/trace orphans adopted through their system.

For Adoptee and Those Who Have Adopted a Child | Adoption | International Social Service Japan

Adoption does not end with the conclusion of the adoption process. It is an important and lifelong process for adopted children, their adoptive parents, and their birth parents and relatives. ISSJ considers the support of “telling” and lif

www.issj.org

It sounds like the challenge is a complete lack of records... you don't know the orphanage he came from? As an orphan, he might not be on any Kokuseki (family registry), but I don't know what kind of records there may be... Given the era, it's even conceivable that he's more or less undocumented, which is going to require an immigration lawyer to sort out... I recommend contacting one anyways, that's going to be your best bet. Don't take me on my word alone, I'm just some yahoo on the internet.

 

[SamanthaMaili]

Thank for the info!

We have some papers but they're all in 1960s Japanese and we haven't been able to find anyone who can translate any of it.

He's contacted the Japanese Embassy in Nashville and they told him they needed papers that he doesn't have so he just sent them what he does have and I guess, we'll see if they can translate the papers.

His father was at the Air Force base in Misawa but we don't know the name of the orphanage he came from. I think we have his family registry but, again, we can't translate it.

I was just hoping to find some info on where I should even begin to look for this info. It's a real cluster. Pretty sure we're just gonna have to call off the Christmas trip bc I can't even talk to anyone in Japan bc I'd need a translator. It's so frustrating.

 

[mdchachi]

1960s Japanese is nothing special. It's like saying "1960s English." Anybody proficient in Japanese should be able make sense of it. I don't know the best place to find translators. I'd probably start with fiverr.com.

 

[Majestic]

If you send me a photo of it I can translate the relevant parts, but I'm not sure you can send me a private message unless you've been a registered member of the forum for a while. And you probably don't want to post a picture here on the forum since its full of private information. Hmm.

 

[Grandpa Frank]

If you can post a good detail picture , admin will see it under approval area. I'll PhotoShop it and send it to Majestic to look at. I think that will work.