McALLEN — Saturday night, Shuichi Nakamura had a dream about the woman he has exchanged letters with for almost 50 years. It happened less than 12 hours after he finally met her in person.

He doesn’t recall exactly what it was about, but his pen pal Linda Gale was there with her family. He assumes that it was a preview of night to come.

Sunday night Gale hosted a barbecue at her house in honor of Nakamura, his wife Tomoko, and his daughter Ryoko. The family was in town for less than 48 hours so the longtime pen pals could finally meet.

The Nakamuras arrived Saturday afternoon to an eagerly waiting Gale at McAllen-Miller International Airport. She and two friends greeted them with yellow flowers and multi-colored balloons.

They exchanged pleasantries, and amid the greetings, Nakamura looked at his friend and said, “you haven’t changed.”

They first exchanged letters when Gale read an advertisement for pen pals in a publication called the Weekly Reader, which is distributed to school-aged children across the country.

About 47 years after first sending a letter, he is exactly the person she has expected him to be, she says, sitting beside him on her living room couch. He says the same about her.

But as if their lengthy relationship isn’t enough of a rare and special occurrence, Nakamura’s visit has brought back memories and unveiled stories than go beyond the pair’s comprehension, they say. Miracles, really.

UNEXPECTED CONNECTIONS

The first letter never reached Nakamura. It was returned to sender, Gale remembers.
She was 15 when she first wrote to him, Nakamura says. “Really?” Gale says in disbelief. “I thought I was in elementary school.”

Nope, he affirms with a smile, producing evidence. In his hand, he presents the first letter she sent him. She typed it up on an old-fashioned script typewriter.

“One of my best friends is a Japanese family. Their name is Nakamura also. … They taught me how to eat with chop sticks and how to eat Japanese food and how to write a little bit of Japanese,” Gale wrote in a letter dated August 29, 1962.

But unable to write Suichi Nakamura’s address in Japanese characters – the only way the correspondence would be able to reach him – she reached out to the father of best friend Susie Nakamura Davis, whose family she mentioned in the letter.

Susie’s father re-wrote Shuichi Nakamura’s address in Japanese characters and sent a letter on Linda’s behalf. It got there.
For 15 years, Nakamura Davis’ father and Shuichi Nakamura exchanged letters. Nakamura Davis didn’t know this until Saturday.

She says she cried when she poured over the 15 years worth of correspondence, in which her father told of his struggles being a Japanese immigrant in America. As with his letters to Gale, Nakamura kept every one he received.

Her father last sent a letter to Nakamura in 1987. In it, he explained that his health was in decline and he wouldn’t be writing anymore. He died a year later.

SHORT, WORTHWHILE VISIT

Ryoko Nakamura was almost as eager as her father was to meet Gale. The 20-something lives in Los Angeles, where she works as a journalist.

For her, meeting Gale was more than meeting the woman who sent her birthday presents as a child. It was more than meeting the sender of Mexican-style souvenirs during Christmas. It was meeting the woman who taught her father the importance of independent thought.

In Japanese culture, she says, they don’t really speak out. They internalize feelings. That was never the way in her family, she says.

“We talked all the time,” she said. “I think that’s partly because he had a friend in the United States. He kind of took the good parts of American culture and applied it to our culture. He always asked us to speak up and express ourselves.”

This was an important meeting for her father and herself. And it’s been worth the miles of travel, she said.

The Nakamura’s are surprised at the expansive space the Valley has. Buildings grow out, not up. They’ve visited the school in Sharyland that Gale attended when she first started writing letters and the recently-burned down seminary in Mission. But most of all they’ve enjoyed seeing the fields of citrus and the vast space the Valley has to offer.

They are things most take for granted, but Nakamura says everything is cramped in their hometown in Japan.
But if anything their experience shows not to take life’s core values for granted. Gale says they always wrote letters about those ideals in their letters. Each one is about family or culture. War has happened several times since they began writing, but it’s never mentioned in their letters. They never mention politics either.

They only talked about the important things, especially because the letters weren’t easy to produce. Shuichi Nakamura said he took great care in writing his letters in English.

Ryoko Nakamura says he kept copies of his drafts. Each letter was edited for grammar and re-written several times. Every word was cross-checked with a Japanese-English dictionary. His first letter took two days to write. His English is not very good, he says.

Moments later, he tells a room of about 20 of Gale’s closest friends and family why he never stopped writing to her.

“She has a warm heart,” he says in perfect English. “She takes care of people.”

Sandra Gonzalez covers features and entertainment for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4427.