A 91-year-old U.S. veteran of the Korean War has been reunited with his first love after spending some 70 years trying to track her down.
“We could dance very well together and entertained a lot [of] people looking on. It didn’t take long for both of [us] to fall in love, less than 6 months,” Mann wrote.
The couple quickly planned to get married as soon as they could arrange the wedding, however Mann was told that he was going to be shipped back to the United States within a week, meaning they would not have enough time to tie the knot.
Yamaguchi was also pregnant.
“When I boarded a plane, I left a very unhappy girl shedding many tears, also pregnant,” Mann wrote. “I reassured her not to worry as I had saved more than enough money to send for her as soon as I could. I was finally discharged on July 9, 1954, and I returned to my home state of Iowa.”
However, a series of unfortunate circumstances kept Mann from his love and the couple soon lost touch.
Despite no communication between the pair, Mann said he has spent the last 70 years trying to find Yamaguchi and feared that she believed he had abandoned her.
Just a Few States Away
That article provided a lead to finding Yamaguchi, who is also now 91, and had been living just a few states away from Mann for years, alongside her Navy husband and three sons.After being informed about the 1956 article, KETV reached out to Yamaguchi’s son, Rich Sedenquist, who played his mother a video clip of the news story about Mann’s search for her, and she immediately recognized him.
Sedenquist said: “She right away [said], ‘I remember him! He really loved me, you know.’”
Despite years spent apart, the former couple immediately hit it off again when they were reunited, and Mann was finally able to tell Yamaguchi that he did not abandon her all those years ago.
“I’m here to tell you that I didn’t abandon you at all. I just couldn’t find you,” the war veteran told her when they met, before explaining that he has kept photos of her in his wallet ever since they met.
Meanwhile, Yamaguchi revealed her son Mike’s middle name is Duane.
“Thank you for remembering and saving all the pictures, you must have loved me,” Peggy said and then hugged and kissed Duane.
In his Facebook post last month, Mann explained that when he had returned home to the United States all those years ago, he discovered that his father had spent all of his savings and thus he was forced to get a job with a highway construction company so that he could send money back to Yamaguchi.
While he and his first love would regularly write to one another at first, Mann said that he failed to receive any letters from her after a month or so until his youngest sister delivered him one letter from Yamaguchi stating that she had lost their baby and married an Air Force man.
“That is when I found out that my mother had been burning all of Peggy’s letters because she didn’t want me to marry a Japanese girl,” he explained. “I was devastated and deeply confused, and yet I never had any words with either my father or mother. So, I have spent the last 70 years trying to find Peggy because the most haunting thing of all is that she must have figured that I abandoned her. ”
“I have never been able to shed this thought and have lived now to the age of 91 and carry a very heavy heart because of what all happened,” he added.
