Searching for my Birth Mom

[reeanuhh]

Hello~

I have been looking for my mother for over 11 years. I had communication through email and letters, but they all stopped after the tsunami/earthquake in 2011. It's always been my fear that she may have passed and I have no other contact with any other family member in Okinawa .

A little backstory on the situation is my dad was in the Marine Corps and he met my mom while being stationed in Okinawa. They had gotten married and both had moved to the United States. I was born a some time later and my mom was having adjustment issues so she left and returned to Okinawa.

I really miss her and at the age of 25 I honestly don't want to begin my life (get married, have children) until I have closure on whether or not she is still alive. I have her name and as well the last address she has ever written me from. If anyone has advice on how to go about looking for her I would really appreciate it.

 

[mdchachi]

Where was she? The 2011 tsunami/earthquake didn't affect Okinawa at all.
What happens to your letters now? Do they get returned to you?

 

[Majestic]

I'm curious about the email too. No more email exchange after March 11th, 2011? Your mom would be young enough to be leaving a pretty big digital footprint. And Mdchachi is right about the casualties caused by the earthquake and tsunami. Unless your Mom was working on one of the coastal fishing towns up in the north of Japan (say, from Onagawa down to Sendai) then you really don't have much to worry about. If you have her last known address, it should be relatively easy to at least take a shot at finding her.
If she was from Okinawa, she probably returned back to Okinawa to be close to her parents?

 

[IronDove]

so your communications stopped around the time of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami but having checked the earthquake data:

9.0 Magnitude Earthquake Near Ishinomaki, Miyagi, Japan - Earthquake Track

9.0 magnitude earthquake near Ishinomaki, Miyagi, Japan on 2011-03-11 05:46:24

earthquaketrack.com

okinawa should not have been affected, as mdchachi rightly said.

as majestic said, your mother could have had business elsewhere in japan closer to the epicentre (hopefully this isn't the case).

so, you've been searching for 11 years and in that time you must have exhausted several lines of inquiry.
presumably, you've done the obvious and scoured facebook and other social media, asked for help from your dad and possibly other family members.
now i don't know what avenues you have access to stateside or how they might affect the avenues you could chase up in japan so please let me know what you've done thus far.
there should be other routes to go down and id be happy to make some suggestions but in the interest of not wasting time, could you list off what you know you can do and what you've already done?