Campano, Anthony

Antonio Pellegrino Campano was born January 24, 1935 in Boston, Massachusetts, the eldest of three sons born to Frank and Mary Campano. After enduring the death of his father at the age of nine and growing up in a modest single-parent household in Boston’s West End, Campano enlisted in the United States Army in 1953. While stationed at Camp Coe in Yokohama, Japan he fell in love with a Japanese woman named Shizuko Shirai. Eleven years his senior, Shirai was born on July 7, 1924 in Niigata, Japan, the second of nine children born to Shirai Shôgo and his wife (nèe Egawa) Yoshino. Campano and Shirai met in 1955 at a Yokohama bar where she worked and he spent his leisure time. Their courtship was a whirlwind romance; the couple set up housekeeping three months after meeting when Campano was assigned a new post in Akiya, Japan. Despite the language barrier–Shirai did not yet speak English fluently–and the considerable age difference, an enduring love began to blossom.

In 1955, Campano was reassigned to the 207th Preventative Medicine Survey Detachment in Tokyo where he met Conrad D. Totman. Totman was born on January 5, 1934 on a dairy farm in Conway, Massachusetts, the second of four children born to Raymond and Mildred Totman. He spent his early years in Conway and later attended college at UMass Amherst and graduate school at Harvard University in East Asian studies. Totman enlisted in the United States Army in 1953 where he met Campano. The two worked together as sanitary inspectors until Campano was discharged from the Army in 1956.

Campano’s discharge meant he had to leave the home he shared with Shirai in Akiya and return to the United States alone. The couple parted with a promise to continue their long-distance romance, to soon reunite, and to one day marry. After his discharge, Campano returned to Boston to live with his mother and Shirai returned to the home of her parents in Senju. Together they continued their courtship by mail, sending letters through Totman and another Army comrade, Albert Baggs, both still stationed in Japan.

Desperate to reunite with Shirai, Campano pursued reenlisting in the Army in hopes of returning to Japan. After three months Campano reenlisted, but was not stationed in Japan as he and Shirai hoped. Stationed instead in Korea, Campano coordinated the arduous legal processes necessary for an interracial military marriage during the post World War II era. In the face of scrutiny, Campano and Shirai continued their relationship and frequently reminded friends, family, and necessary military officials of their enduring love and dedication to marry.

The couple finally wed at the U.S. Consulate in Tokyo on September 3, 1957, and again in a religious ceremony at a Catholic church in Japan on September 18th. Illness concluded their honeymoon early when Shirai entered a Tokyo U.S. Army Hospital where she underwent surgery to remove an enlarged ovary and two large gall stones. Early in November 1957, Shirai returned to her family home in Senju to recuperate where she was joined by Campano upon his reassignment to Japan.

The Campano family grew when Tony and Shizuko had a son, Anthony James Campano, born May 8, 1959. Campano continued to serve in the United States Army until his final discharge in 1973. He began a career in home remodeling while his wife took up work at the Deborah Heart and Lung Hospital. In the early 1980s Campano accepted a position working for the Trenton GMF Postal Facility and retired in 1992. Throughout the years the Campanos continued a friendship with Connie and his wife Michiko (Ikegami) Totman.

The papers of Anthony Campano chronicle his courtship with Shizuko Shirai. The couple met while Tony was stationed in Japan and soon after set up housekeeping. In 1956, more than a year after their initial meeting, Campano was discharged from the Army in Fort Dix, New Jersey and returned to his mother’s home in Boston. It is during this time that they continued their long-distance relationship via correspondence. Despite the fact that family and friends discouraged Campano from reenlisting and pursuing his relationship with Shirai, Tony’s commitment did not waiver. In his letters he expresses his unwavering devotion to Shirai, his loneliness without her, and his efforts to reenlist and re-join her in Japan.

Letters written by Campano to Shirai were addressed to two of Tony’s friends both still stationed in Japan: Conrad D. Totman or Albert E. Braggs. In order to make it clear which letters were intended for Shirai, Tony swapped out the recipient’s middle initial with the letters “S”; letter marked thus were passed onto Shirai often by Michiko Ikegami, who helped her read the letters and write replies.

In addition to the letters of courtship, the collection contains approximately 100 letters that document the lifelong friendship of Campano and Conrad Totman. These letters, written chiefly during Campano’s career in the U.S. Army, chronicle his service in Germany, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Both sets of letters were given to Totman and he transcribed them. The transcriptions along with a few photographs and other accompanying materials, including a copy of the Shirai family register, Tony and Shizuko’s marriage documents, the book The Beginning written by Campano under the pseudonym T. Ogesan, an issue of the West Ender Newspaper edited and published by James Campano are also part of the collection.