Over the past year, Lifelines has received more inquiries from people eager to make contact with long-lost friends or relatives in Japan. Does anyone have any information that might help these readers reconnect?
Victoria Zapata is looking for a friend she met while working as a Spanish teacher in Tokyo some 40 years ago. "Her name was Miss Yasuyo Yamaoka and at that time she worked at Sophia University," she writes. "Her family was from Hokkaido."
Rachel (Klonowski) Bagwell is searching for the sisters of her late grandmother, Yoshiko Craig. According to Rachel's information, the sisters are Yasuko, Sachiko and Iakako, and all four women were the daughters of Tadao Takatsuka from the city of Fuse, which is now a part of Higashiosaka. Yoshiko, who died in 2003, lost touch with her sisters after falling out with them. "Family is family, no matter how big the generation gap. I would like to bring this family back together," Rachel writes. "Can you help me or possibly point me in the right direction where someone could?"