Seventy-five years after the end of World War II, two men previously unaware of each other’s existence — one living in Hiroshima Prefecture and the other far away in the French territory of New Caledonia — renewed their ties of kinship online after they had been broken up by the vagaries of the war.
Robert Tagawa, 71, a resident of New Caledonia, talked in a video chat for the first time in early August with Tomonori Tagawa, 78, who lives in Shobara, Hiroshima Prefecture. Robert's grandfather was Tomonori's uncle.
Immediately after the war in the Pacific broke out, Kameichi Tagawa, Robert’s now deceased grandfather, was detained as an enemy alien and ousted from New Caledonia, to which he had emigrated. As a result, Kameichi was separated from his local family.