Motoko Harashima McAdory passed away at St. Dominic Hospital at the age of 91 years old around 12:30 Saturday morning August 7, 2021. Motoko leaves a legacy of her actions she endured and those actions affected how people remembered her. Funeral services will be 11 a.m. on Saturday, August 14 in the Nowell-Massey Funeral Home Chapel in Louisville, Mississippi. Visitation will be the day of the service from 10 a.m. until service time at the funeral home. Interment will immediately follow the service in Oak Grove Cemetery in Noxapater, Mississippi.
Motoko (known to all of us as Moto) was born in Tokyo, Japan. Her mother, Fuji was a descendant of the aristocracy government. Fuji’s father (Moto’s grandfather) was a Japanese senator and her family history goes back to the Samurai system. The Samurai‘s were known as a powerful military caste in feudal Japan, especially a member of the class of military retainers of the daimyos (meaning owning lots of private land). Moto’s family holds the sacred Samurai sword that carries the mon on it. The Japanese mon was known in Japan as money in the feudal days, but those who were Samurai’s carried the family mon (crest of a coin) which still holds true today. This crest places a mon holder to be a member of the upper Japanese hierarchy. Moto’s father, Kiyoshi Harashima was a business merchant who owned a retail store. The marriage of Moto’s parents was not of a traditional Japanese marriage. Moto’s mother married beneath her class, but Fuji’s father allowed this marriage to take place because Kiyoshi had convinced Fuji’s father that he would provide her with land, material items and would have financial stability. Moto’s family lived well above the middle class people in Tokyo. Their family store was more like a small Walmart store or hardware store we have today. Moto really never talked about her father’s side of the family because they had descendants from the upper islands of Japan that ran into Russia. She always claimed that her sister’s red hair color came from Russia.
When Moto was a young child she always considered herself to be a tomboy. Moto was never prissy, with girl’s clothes. Moto liked wearing shirts and pants, which was really not traditional clothing for a girl to wear back in those days. Moto rarely cried and would always stay close to her father and work with him. Her sisters stayed home and did domestic chores, but Moto would climb trees and play ball in the streets of Tokyo. Moto loved to fight with her sisters and would always win a tumble fight. She would tell stories about fights with her sisters and how they were such crybabies and so weak. Moto learned to fight with boys and would always win her fights. She loved watching boxing matches on television because she loved the art of fighting and would usually pick the correct winner. When Moto became a teenager, she would sneak out of her bedroom window upstairs and jump on the tiled roof and down to the streets of Tokyo and attend movie theaters at night. She wasn’t much of a partier, but she loved the movies, that desire passed down to her daughter, the love of movies. She was destined to go to a private school of Tokyo (all girls) but she didn’t like those girls at the private school, so she would intentionally fail private school tests to go to the public school system (boys and girls). Her mother had hired special tutors to get her in, but she continued to fail the private school entrance exams. Moto finally got her way, she attended public school because she got along better with the boys. Moto’s desire not to go to the private school saved her life because the private school she was to attend was bombed and all the girls died.
Moto used to talk about her cat. She loved her cat, she took care of her male cat and her siblings liked him too, the love of cats also carried down to her granddaughter, Mercedes. One day her cat urinated on a giant banana tree, and the tree died. Her father was furious that his favorite tree died because of Moto’s cat, so he took the cat about 40 miles away and left him. Moto was very sad about her father’s rage for something she loved so much. Her father, Kiyoshi was very surprised when Moto’s cat came back to her and he had decided she could keep her cat.
When WWII broke out, Moto was over 18 years of age. The government came and confiscated their belongings in the store and their jeep/car. They were one of only a few people that had cars in those days, so the government needed it. They maintained a little coal to keep warm, but others didn’t have any way to keep warm so her father shared the coals with some of his customers. When Tokyo was bombed, Moto’s family had to move onto the banks of the Tokyo river to survive. Her father, mother, Moto and her four young siblings lived in the river. The youngest was her two year old brother. This is where her father, Kiyoshi came down with pneumonia and died because they had to jump into the river and go underneath the water when the B-29 aircrafts came to machine gun down the Japanese people. Moto had to breathe for her two year old brother, Mitsugu under the water until the planes flew by. The people there had no food or medical attention, therefore her family knew that in order to survive, they would have to move to the country for food. They traded many pieces of their family jewelry and rare historical items for food along the way. They made their way up into the mountains where her older sister, Fukuko and brother-in-law lived. Moto’s mother and her five siblings had survived the war living in the mountain area of Japan. Sometime after the war ended, Moto’s eldest sister, Fukuko became a famous seamstress. Many people in Japan sought her services. She was asked to make clothes for the emperor of Japan, giving Fukuko, having the family mon hierarchy, an entrance into the emperor’s castle located in Tokyo.
After WWII was over, Moto was betrothed to an aristocratic Japanese man. The Japanese people were to marry in their hierarchy. He was a mountain climber, but that was one sport Moto did not like, she didn’t like going up high. He was unfortunately killed in a mountain climbing accident and she was saddened by the accident but in another feeling she was relieved that she would no longer be told who she had to marry.
Moto worked in a military bank as a bank teller; she would exchange American money to Japanese yen on the Air Force Base. She met a man at this bank named Coy McAdory, (she called Mac) who was stationed in Japan as a soldier in the U.S. Air Force. Mac kept coming back to exchange money. Moto knew this man liked her, because out of all the bank tellers he kept coming back to see her. Finally one day he asked her out for a date. Dating in Japan was a difficult task with an American. Many of the old Japanese people did not like American soldiers. When they walked the streets of Tokyo, they could not walk together or hold hands. The Japanese men would spit at Mac because he wore a flight wing on his military shirt. The same feelings applied with the American soldiers. Mac had to get special permission from his commander to date Moto, then, he had to get permission from the Air Force to marry her. They were to go to Mississippi to meet his family and get married there. There was a lot of red tape to get married, she had to undergo background search for communism. Moto was afraid to go to Mississippi because she felt that the American people would hold animosities against the Japanese for the war. When she arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, she was approached by an elderly woman who welcomed her to Mississippi. Moto was very surprised that she was so nice to her. When Mac applied for marriage in Mississippi, they were not able to get married there. The state had a law in place where two people with different nationalities or race could not get married. They both went to Birmingham, Alabama for their marriage license.
Mr. & Mrs. McAdory headed back to Japan, where Moto gave birth to two children, a daughter named Sara and a son named George. Moto’s brother, Kamio became a lawyer for a bank, her sisters, Toshiko and Kimie both married and moved to America. Toshiko owned commercial real estate in California and her husband worked as a landscape architect for President Richard Nixon and other Hollywood people. Kimie had Kimi’s Dog World where she trained dogs to go into the dog shows and a grooming company that she still works at today. Moto’s brother, Mitsugu became an electrical engineer and lived in California, Texas and moved to London England and retired working in Japan. Moto took culinary classes to become a professional chef. She learned to cook foods from different countries and not only was that her profession, but she really enjoyed cooking. She spent most of her entire life, moving from place to place on military bases working in mess halls, or catering halls. Her favorite work in Guam was baking cakes and decorating them. People from all around Guam would call on her to make special cakes for them. Moto had lived in Japan (three times), Ohio, Guam (twice) California (twice), Texas, Michigan, Virginia and finally Mississippi. Moto’s favorite cooking stories were at Zoli’s Restaurant where she cooked for customers who sat in front of her and watched her cook and they used to tell her that she had the best food in town. She later worked at Little Tokyo as a tempera chef. Moto fell and broke her arm two times at Little Tokyo, but still continued to cook at Little Tokyo. She remained there until she couldn’t work there anymore due to her second stroke, but they wanted her back so badly. Every time anyone visited Moto, she would want to cook for you. Even in her later years, she would cook for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren in her kitchen at home. When Moto wasn’t able to get up anymore, she kept apologizing for not being able to cook for them due to her third and fourth strokes. Moto was an extraordinary woman, tough, strong and everyone thought she was invincible.
