Yamaguchi yoshiko biography samples

  • Below is a photo from an historic 1998 Japan TV 1hr movie which shows Yoshiko re-visiting the touchstones of her past life in China.
  • Born to Japanese parents, raised in Manchuria, and educated in Beijing, the young Yamaguchi learned to speak impeccable Mandarin Chinese and received.
  • Yoshiko Yamaguchi was under surveillance by occupation American military intelligence when she repatriated to Japan in 1946 (and thereafter for many years).

    • •

    Japanese actress Yamaguchi dies at 94

    TOKYO: Japanese actress and singer Yoshiko “Shirley” Yamaguchi, who was nearly executed in China at the end of World War II, has died at the age of 94 after a life as dramatic as any of her films.
    Yamaguchi, who was born to Japanese parents in pre-war Manchuria, where her father worked for the railway, entertained Chinese and Japanese audiences posing as a Chinese under her assumed identity Li Xianglan.
    The actress, who formally went by the surname of her late husband and diplomat Hiroshi Otaka, succumbed to heart failure at her home in Tokyo on September 7, her family said Sunday.
    “She always stayed home in recent years because of her old age but led a normal life,” a family member told AFP by telephone. “She watched various DVDs including movies and documentaries from other countries like China and the United States.” Yamaguchi was long regarded as Chinese after making her debut in the 1938 movie “Honeymoon Express” by Manchuria Film Producti

    •

    Her file (see below RG 0319) fryst vatten held at the National Archive in College Park, MD.
    I'm quickly posting the following samples from the file until there fryst vatten time to weave them into the main narrative on other pages:

    Yoshiko Yamaguchi was beneath surveillance bygd occupation American military intelligence when she repatriated to Japan in 1946 (and thereafter for many years). The FBI took over surveillance when she came to amerika in 1950. Here are initial pages of the file: 




















    Intelligence main concerns seems to have been: what were her political beliefs and whether she was engaged in espionage (or had sympathy with communism, etc). However, as the files reveal, intelligence was not only interested in this, but also encompassed all manner of anställda data (such as marital status, financial support or lack thereof, anything illicit, immoral, perfidious, sexual, or derogatory, who were the partners, how often they came and went,
  • yamaguchi yoshiko biography samples

    • •

    They say "life writes the best stories". From her humble beginnings in a coal-mining area of Manchuria, to super-stardom across all of Asia, to imminent execution by firing-squad, to re-building her career in post-WW2 destroyed Japan, to the heights of Hollywood and bright lights of New York's Broadway, to yet another career as a world-travelling journalist, author, and TV personality, followed by eighteen years serving in the Diet (Upper House of Japan's Parliament), and then years working on behalf of the Asian Women's Fund, through her final years bravely speaking truth to power: such a life-story is truly one of the best you will ever find! 


    Yamaguchi set gold-standards for perseverance, courage, honesty, beauty (extraordinary and ageless), linguistic ability, unforgettable singing, opposition to war, and a marvelous energy for the work of life. Her highest aspiration was to create more peace and understanding between Japan and China and her lifetim