Meriko Tateya Walls

Meriko “Marie” Tateya Walls passed away peacefully Sunday morning, March 13, 2022 at the age of 101. She was born in Los Angeles, California on March 30, 1920 to Japanese immigrant parents who named her “Meriko,” which translates as “American child.”

Her father, Kenkichi Tateya, was a well-known entertainer/entrepreneur who traveled extensively up and down the west coast bringing “silent” Japanese film to Japanese-American communities. During the showing of these silent movies he would theatrically speak the narration and dialogue. Meriko’s mother, Rika (Honda) Tateya, would run the projector and perform other behind-the-scene duties. Because her parents were often out of town traveling, Meriko spent much time with a Japanese couple who took care of her and who lived down the street in the Boyle Heights neighborhood, which had become a thriving Japanese-American community because it had no discriminatory housing covenants.

Meriko was a good student, attending not only Los Angeles public schools but a Japanese language school as well, where she learned to read and write the language spoken in her home. In 1925 Meriko’s parents gave her a baby brother, Yukio “Roy” Tateya. The family had a prosperous life in southern California and was able to take summer vacations in resort towns up the coast. Meriko still remembered the camping trip they took to Yellowstone National Park when she was young. All this changed, however, when Meriko’s father died suddenly in 1931 at the age of 43. Meriko had an older brother, Tomoyuki Tateya (born 1910), who had been left in the care of relatives in Japan when Kenkichi and Rika first traveled to the United States. It was around the time Kenkichi died that Tomoyuki came to the U.S. to attend the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. After he graduated the Tateya family, including Meriko, returned to Japan in 1935 to start a new life.

Meriko was very much bilingual, easily switching between English and Japanese. Nonetheless, traveling to Japan at the age of 15 and attending a Japanese all-girls school was daunting and difficult. She remembers how she had to study ”twice as hard” as the other kids, and even how some of them looked down on her because she had been born in the United States. But she was determined to succeed, eventually graduating as valedictorian in her class.

Meriko went on to college at the Women’s School of Economics and found time to teach physical education and English to young girls in high school. Dramatic world events, however, quickly overtook her life in 1941 when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, signaling the start of World War Two. Her life during this period was not something she dwelled on, but when asked if she was scared of dying in the war, she always replied that no, as a young woman in her early 20’s she thought she would live forever. She did say that later in the war, when Japan was being bombed, she thought it was “stupid” that she and her students were required to build military “tanks” from wood and cardboard to fool the airplanes flying overhead. But in 1945 the war literally hit close to home with the firebombing of Tokyo. Along with hundreds of thousands of other structures, her family’s home burned to the ground. She remembers watching the remnants of her piano burning, with its inside parts giving off strangely beautiful, multi-colored flames.

With the end of World War Two came the Occupation of Japan by the U.S. military. Much of the country was devastated, and work was hard to find. But again, because she was bilingual and a U.S. citizen by birthright, Meriko was able to get a job working for the Occupation forces and the Japanese government. As a translator/interpreter she made money to help support the family, something that family members never forgot. While working at the Occupation Headquarters in Tokyo, the same building where General Douglas MacArthur worked and just across from the Imperial Palace, Meriko met and fell in love with Haskell Howard Walls, a young G.I. sergeant from Oklahoma. They married in January 1949 in Tokyo, and later in August 1951 they welcomed their son, Thomas Ken Walls, into the world.

In 1952 with the end of the Occupation, Haskell Walls was reassigned to Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City, Oklahoma, and on June 1, 1953 Meriko gave birth to a daughter, Theresa June Walls.

The new family eventually bought a home and settled in Oklahoma City. In the late 1950’s Meriko began work as a bookkeeper with McIntyre Brothers Realty. She was as good with numbers as she was with people, so it is not surprising that she became a loan officer for a bank, finishing out her career in the early 1970’s at Home Federal Savings and Loan where she had worked for more than ten years.

Meriko’s life in Oklahoma was good. Early on she helped her younger brother, Yukio “Roy” Tateya, move to Oklahoma where he got a job at Tinker AFB and became a successful architect. She also made many friends in the Japanese “war bride” community centered around Tinker AFB. Like her, these Japanese women had met their G.I. husbands during the Occupation of Japan and had returned to the U.S. with them. She enjoyed speaking Japanese with these friends, and she especially enjoyed eating traditional Japanese cuisine with them at a time when local Japanese restaurants were nonexistent. Later in life she was always amazed that her son “could just go to the grocery store and pick up some fresh sushi” for her to eat! In the early 1960’s she participated in a women’s bowling league, winning numerous trophies with an all-Japanese team that was named “Ichiban.” The competing teams eventually learned—some of them the hard way—that “ichiban” in Japanese means “number one.”

Meriko and her husband, Haskell, worked hard and saved money to help their son “Tom” go to college. Meriko believed in the importance of education along with hard work, drilling those lessons into her son. For several years the family operated the Tinker AFB movie theater concession stand in the evenings and on weekends to help Tom save for college. This “side job” did not allow for many family vacations, so after Tom graduated Meriko and Haskell retired and began enjoying “the things they always wanted to do.” They soon bought a travel trailer and a pickup truck and took extended trips around the United States. They also bought a small, in-need-of-repair “retirement home” in Byars, Oklahoma, the small town where Haskell was born and raised. There they could also be close to their daughter “Terry,” who resided in Pauls Valley at the Southern Oklahoma Resource Center. Even after Haskell decided he had had “enough of traveling,” Meriko still wanted to “see the world.” And she did just that by taking tours to far off destinations nearly every year with one of her many girlfriend traveling companions.

In 1987 the love of Meriko’s life, Haskell, passed away. Though heartbroken she knew she needed to continue on, and she did. She kept up her travels, though perhaps not as often as before. By chance a Federal Aviation Administration official in Oklahoma City found out she spoke Japanese. He needed someone to serve as an “ambassador” of sorts to Japanese students attending the FAA air traffic control school in Oklahoma City. Meriko agreed, and thus began her “job” of helping these young students acclimate to living in Oklahoma, even if their stay was only several weeks or a few months. She would drive them around town so they could shop for American “omiyage”—special presents for family and friends “back home.” Meriko especially enjoyed showing off Oklahoma City’s “tourist spots,” the most popular at that time being the Cowboy Hall of Fame. And if needed, she even helped by lending out her extra rice cooker for them. Years after she was finished with this project, she still received cards and letters from Japan from the many grateful students she had befriended and helped.

Up until her retirement Meriko had been active in her church, Southminister Presbyterian, serving for a time as the church historian. When asked why she was a Presbyterian, she would say that the Presbyterians had always been good to the Japanese people, and she thought that was important. It is no small wonder that Meriko too was always good to people. Friends, coworkers and caregivers all loved her. In her later years Meriko was a beloved fixture at St. Ann’s Independent Living and then Northhaven Assisted Living Centers. She enjoyed and participated in all the activities that were offered and was ever ready to go on a field trip. As she often said, “I’ll try anything once!” She had a sweet disposition and was always there with a smile, a laugh and a willing ear. Later on, when she came to depend more on others, she still insisted she never wanted “to be a burden.” It was hard not to love her, and she will be missed by all those she touched.

Over the years Meriko would return to Japan to visit her family, the last time being 1995 when she went with her son. In Japan on her father’s side she leaves behind her niece, Ami Yokoyama, and her husband Kazuhiko, and numerous others in the Tateya family. On her mother’s side (Honda) she leaves behind a cousin, Sumiko Honda Koseko, and her husband Eiichi, and their sons and grandchildren. In the United States there is her daughter, Theresa Walls, residing at the Center of Family Love in Okarche, Oklahoma. Also, her son Thomas Walls and his wife Deborah of Oklahoma City, their son Father Jayd Doran Neely of Nashville, Tennessee; and their daughter Meghann Neely Gardner and her husband Joseph Frank Gardner and their daughter Clover Whitley Gardner of Portland, Oregon. Others include Meriko’s niece, Janet Lei (Tateya) Blancett and her husband Kent Allen Blancett of Houston, Texas; nephew, David Len Tateya, of Dallas, Texas; sister-in-law Lillian Wall of Byars, Oklahoma; nephew Robert Wall and wife Carol of Wanette, Oklahoma and his family; and nephew Ray Lee Wall of Blanchard, Oklahoma and his family.

A memorial service will be held 3:00 p.m., Thursday, May 12, 2022, in Meeting Room B., of the Patience S. Latting Northwest Library, 5600 Northwest 122nd Street, Oklahoma City, OK 73142

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you make a small donation in Meriko’s name to the Center of Family Love in Okarche, Oklahoma https://centeroffamilylove.org/donate, or to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California https://www.janm.org/donate

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.chapelhill-okc.com for the Walls family.