According to my mother, my grandparents—that would be Harry and Tillie Zellers—tended to give their son Neal a hard time growing up. He was their youngest, after Allen, Arlene, Harry Jr., and Mark, having been born in 1930, and would remain their youngest child until Reed came along rather unexpectedly in 1946 when Tillie was 44 (but that’s another story). Neal always had vision problems and coming along during the depression as he did, perhaps that might help explain his parents resentment—so much for my pop psychology.
In any case after Neal graduated from Richland High School in 1948, he enlisted in the Army that September.
In 1951 the local paper, the Lebanon Daily News, printed this little notice about Neal and his brother Harry Jr. (whom everyone called Pepper, but that’s also another story):
It was in 1949 while Neal was in Okinawa that I was born and my mother sent him a picture of me, which Neal presumably had some street artist paint onto a piece of silk. That portrait of me as an infant was hung in our living room while I was growing up and I had it reframed and it hangs in my living room now. I wrote about it with pictures here.
I never knew the story of Neal’s wooing of Fumiko, but when I went in search of clips about Neal in the newspaper archives, I was surprised to find the complete story written by Julie Mark. The article itself is appended to this post, but I’ve transcribed it for easier reading. It’s dated February 5, 1954.
LOVE CONQUERS ALL… Neal Zellers is a determined young man. It sometimes takes him a while to decide what he wants; but once he’s made up his mind, trifles don’t stand in his way… trifles like the United States Army, United States Immigralion Laws, reams of paper work, a few thousand miles distance, stuff like that.
He’s the only guy we ever met who voluntarily served a stretch in the Army to get to the girl he wanted. And he got her.
Zellers, his bride Fumiko and his six-year-old adopted daughter, Kathy Jean Zellers, have arrived home from Okinawa. For the time being they’re living in the comfortable Richland home of Zellers’ parents, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Zellers, while Neal looks for a job.
Neal recalls that it was early in December of 1949 when he first saw Fumiko. He was astride a 50-foot pole on Okinawa, repairing an antenna, when he caught sight of her walking by. He asked someone who she was and was told that she was employed in the home of an Army colonel.
Neal made up his mind he wanted to meet her. This finally happened in May, 1950, when they were introduced.
It wasn’t a very fast-moving romance, according to Neal. Okinawans are shy, he says, and it was months before he had a date with Fumiko without benefit of chaperone.
Meantime, the young soldier was in a quandary. He wanted to marry Fumiko and bring her home with him, and his time to remain on the island was running out. He wondered whether his family would accept a foreign bride and whether the contrast in race and background would make a difference.
By the time he was sure he wanted Fumiko for his wife, the regulation permitting foreign brides to enter the country had expired and it was time for Neal to ship back to the States.
Fumiko’s name would have had to be entered on the immigration lists, and it could have taken from five to ten years for her to arrive here.
Neal did the only thing he knew to do: After just a few months at home, he re-enlisted in the Army for duty in the Far East Command, on the chance that he’d be sent lo Okinawa again.
He was sent first to Japan, where he applied for a letter of transfer to his old unit, Signal Activities, 8116th Army Unit, on Okinawa.
By February, 1953, his ambition was realized. He lost no time in looking up Fumiko and telling her why he had returned.
After all this effort, one would think that a gal would be convinced that the boy-friend really meant business, Fumiko wasn’t. Neal recalls that she tried to “test” him by doing things to make him angry. He doggedly persisted and finally convinced her.
Obtaining permission to marry a foreign girl overseas usually takes a soldier from four to seven months. In this respect, the couple was lucky. Fumiko’s foster mother is a cousin of the president of the Conference of Mayors, which takes in all of the Ruyuku Islands. He used pressure to put through the papers in five weeks after deciding that Neal had waited long enough for the girl of his choice.
The application for permission to be married consisted of an original letter with 12 inclosures, each with five copies in English and five in Japanese. The entire mass of paper work was about an inch thick.
Neal and Fumiko are probably the most married couple you ever heard of. They were married three times—by the U. S. consulate and the mayor of Okinawa on July 10, 1953, and by an Army chaplain on July 18. They’re shown here with their three marriage certificates. They’re looking forward to having films of the chapel ceremony developed to show their family and friends.
Neal was discharged at Camp Stoneman, Calif., on January 10, and he and his wife and Kathy Jean came East by plane, arriving next day. Kathy Jean is Fumiko’s daughter by a former marriage.
We like this story and enjoyed talking to Neal and Fumiko at the Zellers home. Kathy, who started first grade in the Richland School two days after their arrival, was also at home with the mumps and was darting around the house singing “Jingle Bells.” Neal has done a good job of teaching her English. He also bought her her first doll after he saw children playing with string and rubber bands on the island.
Kathy loves to sit and rock on a little Pennsylvania Dutch chair in her new grandparents’ living room, as you see her here.
Last Saturday night the tiny Okinawan bride received a warm welcome into her husband’s family at a homecoming party, with Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Zellers, 427 Sand Hill Road, as hosts. The couple was presented with all kinds of nice gifts.
We asked Fumiko whether there was any one thing she particularly likes about her life in a new country. She said there’s not any one thing—she likes it all. And it’s good to be living again in a country with many trees. World War II leveled off most of Okinawa’s trees, and the Lebanon Valley mountains are still a novelty to her.
I can add a couple things to that story. I believe that some of Fumiko’s relatives tried to convince her to leave Kathy behind in Okinawa, fearful of the reception that she might receive in the US.
“Kathy” is not her birth name. When the family moved to the US, she was given the option to pick an American-sounding name, and Kathy was the name she chose. I don’t know what her original name was.
Note that this story was published on February 5, 1954; Neal and Fumiko were married the previous July, and they didn’t have the pictures of the wedding developed yet? My mother saved those photos all those years and I finally came across them the other day.
And here curtesy of my uncle Allen’s slides, are a few photos of the arrival of the happy family in the East (probably at the Philadelphia airport) on a United Airlines plane.
And finally, when Neal and Fumiko first came to the States, they stayed with Neal’s parents, my grandparents, Harry and Tillie Zellers, in the half a house on South Race Street that they rented from Walter Spangler. Besides my grandparents, their sons Harry Jr. (whom everyone called Pepper) and Reed also lived there. So left to right it’s Pepper, Harry, Tillie, Fumiko, Neal, with Reed and Kathy in the front. Notice how happy everyone looks.
Here is the newspaper clipping with the story of Neal wooing Fumiko. For those of you who recall Mrs. Wandell, there is a brief anecdote about her following Neal’s story.
