Grieving mom not ready to let go of lost son

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By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer

The memory of her son running to the train in Japan on their last day together still flutters in Masumi Terata's mind.

Masumi Terata, who lost her 17-year-old son, Yusuke, in the Ehime Maru accident, holds her son's favorite camouflage cap. As a grieving mother who doesn't want to let herself grieve, Terata clutches memories. Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

Each announcement the Navy has made this week about recovering bodies in a search of the wreckage off the coast of Honolulu has brought Masumi Terata a tortured kind of hope.

She can't move on because she can't let go.

She only remembers.

"What kind of souvenir do you want from Hawai'i?" the boy she nicknamed "Yu-kun" asked during their drive to the train station when he left the southwestern Japanese harbor town of Uwajima in January.

"The best one would be you — come back safely on March 24," she replied.

"Dad, Mom, stay healthy while I'm gone," he said.

The heartbroken mother replays the words again and again. She has memorized the moment of their goodbye, when she shook hands with her 17-year-old son, Yusuke, and watched him as he ran with his belongings on the short steps into the train.

"I'll always remember that scene, our conversation and his back as he disappeared into the train," she said. "I believed that he would come back safely. I never thought that his back would be my last glimpse of him."

Yusuke Terata's last moments are images his mother can only imagine.

She thinks of him hanging onto the deck railing of the Ehime Maru as the ship went down. She guesses he was too scared to jump. She sees the water rushing up to his knees.

Yusuke Terata was one of nine men and boys lost when their ship was rammed by an American submarine. Advertiser library photo

She hopes Yusuke made it back inside the ship, only because she wants his body to be found.

But she knows she is hoping against hope.

Her son is one of four boys from Uwajima Fisheries High School who died Feb. 9 along with two teachers and three crewmen when the USS Greeneville hit and sank their ship in 2,000 feet of water. Based on accounts of 26 survivors about where the nine victims were last seen, Navy divers searching for bodies this week in a $60 million recovery effort don't expect to find her son among the remains.

But each time divers find a body inside the hull of the sunken Ehime Maru, Masumi Terata waits at the Ala Moana Hotel in Honolulu for news that might bring her peace. She and her husband wanted to be here to see the Navy's recovery effort. Four bodies have been identified so far. Her son is not among them.

"I have a hard time when I think Yusuke is in a huge ocean, alone," she said.

As a grieving mother who doesn't want to let herself grieve, Masumi Terata grasps at memories.

She carries photographs of her son, and she clutches the camouflage cap that was her son's favorite.

She smells it. She hugs it to her chest. She gazes at a picture of Yusuke wearing it.

She wants her son back.

"I know crying every day doesn't help. But I can't help it when I think of my life without you. I just don't know what to do. Will it help if I die, too? If I die, will I see you again? I thought about killing myself. But I can't. I can't do that, because it will kill your father and your brother, Shun-kun. But I miss you."

Masumi Terata's journal entries echo her imaginary conversations with her son.

She tells him if he comes home, she'll fix his favorite dinners. She'll have the refrigerator filled with Coke, because she knows that's the first place he stops after school. She promises not to give him a hard time.

She says she wishes for a time machine to go back and save him.

She still thinks of what it would be like for Yusuke to grow up and become a veterinarian, just like he wanted.

"Since the accident, I have been saying 'good morning' and 'good night' in his room every day," Masumi Terata said. "I want to touch Yusuke. I can feel him only from the smell of his clothes or hat."

She carries items with her that remind her of her son. After he left Uwajima for fisheries training, she posted three photographs of him in the kitchen so she could look at them and pray for his safety.

"I believed that Yusuke would come back having grown up to be a man, both mentally and physically, from the training," she said. "But the result was he never got a chance for that to happen."

The Navy has offered up to $1 million to compensate each victim's family, she said.

That will not bring Masumi Terata justice.

She doesn't trust the Navy, and she's not satisfied with the U.S. military's legal system that gave Scott Waddle, the former USS Greeneville skipper, an administrative punishment instead of a court-martial for his role in the accident.

"We still don't understand the process of the court of inquiry, because both the judge and Scott Waddle were from the Navy," she said. "A lawsuit is inevitable to find out the truth. We don't care about money."

What she really wants is what she cannot have.

"I want Yusuke back," she said. "When I saw the ocean, a question came to my mind: How did the Greeneville collide with the Ehime Maru; they are like two tiny dots in a huge ocean? I want to find out the truth of the accident and hope to keep similar accidents from happening again."

She's convinced the Navy must be hiding something. She doesn't believe that the Greeneville crew simply didn't see the Ehime Maru before the submarine rammed it. And she's upset that Waddle never came to Uwajima to apologize.

She wants him to come to the town that lost its sons. She wants to tell him about her suffering.

Interpreter Toshi Erikson contributed to this report.

Reach Tanya Bricking at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.