Some parts I left out of the LKTIV origin story

In 1948, I accompanied my mother on a voyage from Japan to San Francisco on a troop ship that lasted 28 days and should have qualified her for sainthood, or at least free drinks at every Officer’s Club she ever walked into for the rest of her life. The ship was about the size of the cork in a bottle of wine and pitched and bobbed like one, or at least I was told that by my mother when she saw fit over the years to remind me how much I owed her for putting up with the “first sergeant” all the way across the Pacific. In later years, she admitted that the presence of a baby was so unique that the ship’s crew and the soldiers aboard took care of me for most of every day, so she was stuck with me and my considerable lung-power only in our stateroom at night.

To give you an idea of the luxury accommodations afforded military dependents traveling across the oceans in those days, here’s a picture of our family on the SS Patch, another troop ship, on our way to assignment in Germany in 1955:

L -R, that’s me next to the open hatch, my sister Susan, my brother Frank, and my mother. Judging by our attire, the bell for dinner must have just rung, and we were ready to go up for the relatively formal evening meal they served nightly on the SS Patch.

Anyway, back to the origin story —

We moved around the country constantly after returning to the States. By the time I left home at 18, my mother figured we had lived in 22 different dwellings, including a converted World War II-era hospital wing at Fort Benning, GA, a metal Quonset hut in San Antonio, TX, during the summer, a converted WWII barracks at Fort Leavenworth, KS, and converted Nazi-era military housing in Oberammergau, Germany.

It was during the year we lived in downtown Leavenworth while my father was stationed in Korea in 1962 that the story of my life took an unexpected turn. One day, the government of Japan informed the Department of State that they were claiming Japanese citizenship for the 30 or so children born after the war in Japan before there was an immigration treaty between the two countries. That very day, the State Department called the parents of all the affected children and informed them of this unexpected diplomatic emergency. My mother drove down to Leavenworth Senior High School, took me out of class, and drove me to Kansas City, where under instructions of the Department of State, a federal judge was waiting for us in his courtroom. I raised my right hand, swore allegiance to the United States of America, and became a citizen.

I don’t know why the Department of State didn’t tell the government of Japan to take its claim of citizenship over a bunch of American kids and shove it up their ass. After all, Japan had waged an undeclared war against the United States, killing thousands of American soldiers, and lost. Maybe it was a kind of diplomatic macho move by Japan to remind the nation that had conquered them and written their Constitution that, hey, we’re a country, too. The whole thing was never explained to me, but I’ve held onto my citizenship papers, shown above, ever since.

My citizenship certificate has proved necessary several times over the years because I don’t have a birth certificate. The Army wasn’t prepared for the birth of babies in occupied Japan. The only proof I have of my birth is a Department of Defense medical form that shows my mother entering care at the Fukuoka field hospital on one date, and her discharge on April 16 along with the discharge of one child, Lucian K. Truscott IV. The DD hospital form proves she entered the hospital by herself, and came out carrying me. In the interim, I emerged into the world.