The New York Times ran an obituary of Motoko Fujishiro Huthwaite, one of the Monuments Women who worked to preserve artistic and cultural treasures during and after World War II. As the Times describes their work:
During the war, a small, special force of American and British art historians, museum directors, curators and others started out steering Allied bombers away from cultural targets in Europe and overseeing temporary repairs when damage occurred. Their numbers grew, and after the war they tracked down more than four million objects stolen by Nazi Germany and returned them to the countries from which they came.
In the Pacific theater, their mission was chiefly to assess the damage to cultural treasures, prevent looting and return stolen objects. In the course of their work they came across many works of art that no one from the West had ever seen. This required a tremendous amount of inventorying and record keeping.
But I thought this was equally interesting:
She told Mr. Edsel that after the war, when the Americans occupied Japan, she had to choose whether to become a Japanese citizen or have her American citizenship reinstated.
As she pondered her choice, she looked at her family tree, and what she saw persuaded her to remain an American.
“All the girls had no names,” she said. “‘Child girl, child girl.’ Girls would not keep their name. We girls just didn’t count. Nameless. In Japan, it was only the men that counted.”
Ah for the days when the choice of America was so clear!
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