Posted on 05/17/2022 3:19:21 PM PDT by DFG
FORT WORTH, Texas — The advent of DNA test kits has helped millions of people discover intricate details of their heritage.
They've also uncovered hundreds of thousands of family secrets that some parents preferred would have stayed hidden.
But in Fort Worth, Michael Bennett has uncovered a world -- and a happy ending -- he never fully imagined.
"My parents never hid the fact that I was adopted," Bennett, 70, told us from his Fort Worth home, where one room is filled with the memorabilia, commendations and photographs of a rewarding military career.
And in one corner, a picture of a 3-year-old boy in Japan who was about to start that life in America.
He was adopted by an American couple in the early 1950s. He knew that his biological parents were a Japanese woman in post-WWII occupied Japan and an American serviceman -- the usual story he assumed.
"There are so many kids that pop up after conflict, after wars. And I was one of them," Bennett said.
But his adoptive parents made sure he knew who his real mom was.
Her name was Yoshiko Nakajima. And alone in Japan with a mixed-race baby in an unaccepting country for that at the time, Bennett knows she did what she thought was right.
(Excerpt) Read more at wfaa.com ...
Nice story, it’s good to hear of these to counteract all the negative news.
Thank you for posting this.
Blurry screen alert
Great story . thanks.
At least it wasn’t Yoko Ono.
Good for him!
He's the big brother, now. :)
I took the Ancestry test. It turns out that the man I thought was my Dad was not.
My bio Dad turned out to be some guy my mother had a fling with while she was married to the man whom I thought was my Dad.
She lied to both us. I will never forgive the witch.
All the years I thought I was half Polish, in actuality, I’m half Scottish.
Just found this out a year ago. Too late for me to know my bio Dad’s family. He and his siblings are dead.
Something similar happened to me but not through a DNA test. I am in my 70’s and I found out a couple of years ago that I had a half brother I never new I had. He was dying of cancer and his daughter was going all out to find out who his mother was before he died.
She managed to locate my first cousin who heard of the story from her mother, my mother’s sister. Also she is a big researcher of our family tree. So she contacted me and gave me the information and left it up to me to make the final decision.
Anyways I decided to contract her and I sent the daughter all the information I had along with a picture of “our” mother. So he at least died knowing who his mother was.
your mother did what she thought was best at the time.
Your father probably knew
No one expected DNA tests
He was a Green Beret BTW.
Your dad is the man who raised you--not the sperm donor who got your mom pregnant. No offense to sperm donors in general.
Can’t imagine the shock. And having to go from pierogies and kielbasa to haggis and cullen skink.
Screwing around while you are married and then lying to your husband and your child is not what I’d call “best”.
I understand what happened, and I am sorry, but isn’t the man who raised you still your father?
I used to joke about being switched at birth. Mom just laughed and said I stood out like a white face calf among all those brown and Hispanic babies at the hospital.
So there went my excuse.
One could hope your later in life experience might turn into the greatest lesson in forgiveness you never thought possible.
Great story!
With so much bad news washing over us, this “Crack in the clouds” is much appreciated!
What's done is done. And you wouldn't exist, if things were different.
You can choose to be a bastard about it, or you can accept that people make mistakes.
Take a look at the people Jesus had in his ancestry.
Jesus’ Ancestors: Murderers, Cheats, Prostitutes, Refugees, Adulterers…
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