Introduction

Megumi [may-GOO-mee] Kashuahara was a newly minted American citizen, having been naturalized just a month earlier. Both she and her mom became citizens the same day. Her mom, Keiko Kashuahara-Johnson, married an American serviceman six years previous. She, a widowed Japanese doctor, and he, a military anesthesiologist in the U. S. Navy stationed at the U. S. Naval Hospital in Okinawa, Japan. U. S. Navy Lieutenant Commander [equiv. of Major] James T. Johnson owned a home in Bethesda, Maryland, near Bethesda’s Walter Reed Military Hospital.

This story begins in Baltimore, Maryland. Megumi was a twenty-one-year-old student who had graduated from the University of Maryland’s nationally ranked pre-med program with her B. S. in pre-med biology. With an I.Q. of 148, she graduated high school at the age of sixteen. Now at twenty-one, she was into her second of her four-year medical school studies at Johns Hopkins University/Hospital.

Excited at becoming an American, she volunteered to stuff Christmas boxes to be sent overseas to U. S. servicemen away from home for the holidays. So, the very first day after Halloween, on November 1^st, while stuffing the boxes at the marine barracks at the U. S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, she was asked by a young marine private if she was married. She laughed and asked him, “Do I look married to you?”

Although twenty-one, Megumi was 4’ 11” and weighed 130 pounds. She looked like a high school freshman, not a college medical student. She replied, “No, I’m not married, why do you ask?”

“Well, Ma’am. If you were married, then I wasn’t gonna ask you if you wanted to volunteer to be a pen pal to a serviceman. If you were married, I don’t think your husband would like his wife writing to a solder, would he?”

“A married woman could write a female soldier, couldn’t she?”

“Ah, yes, Ma’am. You’re right, I guess she could. I’ll need to remember that.”

“Well, I’m not much on writing letters, but for our soldiers overseas, I’ll volunteer to be a pen pal. What do I do to sign up?”

“Please fill out this form, Ma’am, and here’s the name of a serviceman. Please put his name and address on the form as the person to whom you are writing.”

“Great! I can do that!” Megumi filled out the form and looked at the soldier’s name. Airman First Class Sean M. Gibson, B-1B bomber crew chief, U. S. Air Force. The address was an A. P. O. [Army Post Office].

That evening when she returned to Baltimore to her campus dorm, she thought about what to write. She had started talking to friends and some relatives in Tokyo, Japan for free over the internet by downloading the app Discord on her iPhone. She thought that something short, just to introduce herself would be best. She would include her Discord username and tag so that he could call her and request they be friends. Then, instead of writing, they could talk on the phone, send photos and it would be more immediate and by exchanging photos, they would also be able to see what each other looked like. They could also video chat.

Now, Megumi thought, what do I write? Well, here goes nothing...

Hi Sean,

My name is Megumi Kashuahara. I’m a twenty-one-year-old sophomore medical student at Johns Hopkins University. I was asked if I wanted to be a pen pal to a U. S. serviceman and thought it would be great to correspond with a guy who might be lonely or need a friend from home. I hope and pray this letter finds you healthy and well. Wanna be friends?

I am a new American, having been naturalized alongside my mom last month at the War Memorial building in Baltimore. She’s a doctor and so is my stepdad. He’s a Lt. Commander in the U. S. Navy. They met in Okinawa where they worked together in the Military hospital there. Now, they both work at Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. I’m going to medical school to become an OB-GYN, a women’s doctor that also delivers babies.