Bidding ‘Aloha Oe’ to an Enduring Love
A Nisei boxer and a Norwegian homemaker’s love story endured discrimination and two marriages — to each other.
In life, Dick Miyagawa always said he loved his wife Marion so much he married her twice. Eleven years after the young couple exchanged vows for the first time in a little Georgia Army chapel, they met at the altar again in 1956 — this time with their kids.
“They said they giggled through the whole thing,” said their daughter Judy Miyagawa, 54, from her home in Madison, Wis.
Dick, who died in 2001 at 81, wedded Marion twice because as a Nisei his marriage to a Caucasian woman was not legally recognized. Their love story, told with a touch of humor, officially ended Oct. 18 when Marion passed away at 84, but their legacy of triumph over adversity lives on and continues to inspire.
“The couple would face opposition on both sides of the family for their decision to marry. Marion held her head high amidst discrimination and stood by her man as they moved to Hawaii and back to Madison again in search of a place they felt welcomed,” read the obituary in a local newspaper.
“They really loved each other. They were best friends,” said Judy. “They fought it out. They didn’t give up.”
The NCAA Champ
Dick was born in Spreckelsville, Maui to hardworking Issei plantation workers. Back then the only way off “the Rock” was to punch your way off, so Dick took up boxing and by the time he was in his 20s he was an All Island golden glove champion and a skilled singer. He won the All Island singing championship and later started a band called the Transplanted Pineapple Pickers.
In 1939, Dick applied to San Jose State and arranged an unorthodox passage to the mainland — he stowed away on a ship sitting on the deck and singing in the moonlight with his guitar. At San Jose State, he became the big man on campus and won a Nation
al Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship in 1942 as a 127-pound boxer.
“He would say the toughest opponent was the crowd,” said Rick Miyagawa, 47, their youngest son. With Dick in the ring, the crowd would launch into a vicious attack and scream, “kill the Jap!”
Dick also captured the Pacific Coast championship and had his heart set on competing for his country in the Olympics when xenophobia was at its peak and the War hit home. Along with other Japanese Americans, Dick was taken to Santa Anita and then to the deserts of Gila River where he spent a year writing letters to universities asking to be sponsored out of camp.
“Some of the letters he received from Southern universities were really nasty,” said Judy.
But fate stepped in and the University of Wisconsin came calling for Dick to join their boxing team.
The Nisei and the Granddaughter of a Norwegian Viking
Dick met Marion Smithback, a striking waitress of Norwegian descent, at a Madison drug store where she worked. He was smitten but the feeling was not mutual at first. It wasn’t until her coworker and Dick’s boxing team member, Robert Hammel, urged Marion to go on a date with Dick that the couple embarked on a lifelong relationship dappled with adversity.
From his brother, Johnny — a decorated member of the 100th Battalion — Dick heard glorious stories of heroism that stirred his soul, so in 1945 he enlisted in the Army and headed south to Camp Wheeler in Macon, Georgia.
“Being interned really hurt my father’s feelings because he really considered himself American,” said Rick.
But the woman he fell in love with refused to be left behind. Soon Marion and her sister hopped on a train to visit Dick, and it was there on a Georgia base that Marion and Dick got married for the first time.
“He used to say that she was like a Japanese girl,” said Judy about her parents. “She was always very supportive and did whatever he wanted. But she was also really strong-minded and feisty.”
From the start, they faced discrimination from both sides of the family and from the community where they couldn’t find housing.
During that time, antimiscegenation statutes were still on the books in 16 states, mostly in the South and the Midwest. In 1956, the couple read a newspaper article about states that banned interracial marriages including Georgia. They asked their pastor to send a letter to the Georgia attorney general, who responded that under state law, their marriage was unlawful. Their pastor, Andrew Clark, married them again and after 11 years of marriage the couple were newlyweds again
Back Together Under the Hawaiian Sunset
Dick hung up his boxing gloves for a career in real estate while Marion raised the kids. They spent all their time together going to football games and bowling until Dick started showing signs of Alzheimer’s. After his death, Marion spiraled downwards.
“It was really, really hard for her,” said Judy about Marion who also battled Alzheimer’s. “She used to say she missed him and would sit at the window and talk to the moon and talk to the oak tree.”
The family plans to scatter the couple’s ashes together along the sun kissed shores of the Hawaiian coastline, so they can always be together.
Her parents’ enduring love story has also influenced Judy, who met her husband, Dan McCarthy, when they were 15. They have now been married for 34 years.
“My dad was a very motivated person. He would ask, ‘What did you do today to justify your existence?’”
And maybe the answer is love.
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