A birthday gift of peace

Plummeting to earth while skydiving with Skydive Saipan recently, 2015 Miss Marianas Jian Joyner was startled by the images that filled her mind.

As the air hit her face and body in the controlled freefall with instructor Jon Crammer, she felt a rush of an expanded, freer spirit and a personal emotional release that comes with being 14,000 feet above it all.

“What flashed before my eyes in the terror of falling was not my whole life. Surprisingly, I saw images of things that had happened in the lives of my mother, grandmother, and grandfather. Each image was about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 70 years ago,” said Joyner.

Two atomic bombs were flown by the U.S. military from Tinian and dropped on the two cities on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, and brought the end of World War II.

“I wondered what flashed before my grandmother’s innocent, little girl’s eyes in Japan on those fateful days when she was told that it was the bombs falling, and about the rising, spectacular mushrooms, and the violent shaking of her island. I wondered what she was told about the then-relationship between Japan and the Marianas,” said Jian.

This revelation struck a cord in Joyner’s mother, Yasuko, as she was born on Aug. 6 and as a child, she learned to associate the celebration of her birthday with the national ringing of bells in Japan to recognize each anniversary of the Hiroshima devastation.

The connection was too overwhelming. This Sunday, Jian is celebrating her birthday, while Yasuko follows on the 6th and on Aug. 10 is the 17th death anniversary of her grandfather, Masakazu Harada. Her grandmother, Toyoko Harada, still lives in Tokyo.

“How she thought of her grandparents at this time and made this connection was important to me. I really thought what a great opportunity to share this and help further develop our relationship between our islands and Japan,” said Yasuko.

Born in the small prefecture of Aomori, Masakazu moved to Tokyo to study at the university and met Toyoko, who was also born in a small town of Gunma. Together, they built a family packaging company.

When Yasuko decided to move to Saipan to work at Kaizue’s Boutique in the 1990s, she did not imagine her one-year stay would turn into over 20 years of marriage to an American, Dr. John Joyner, with whom she has two children, Jian and Jehn.

“As second-generation Japanese, I did not make the immediate historic connection of the islands to Japan—to me, it was a nice place to work,” she laughs.

Every summer, Yasuko would take the children to visit their grandparents and the closeness of the family grew despite being an ocean apart.

“I recall how earnestly my grandfather prayed to delay his cancer and let him live a few more years. He wanted to teach his two Japanese-American grandchildren, me and my brother Jehn, about peace in the world,” said Jian.

“Now that I know what skydiving is all about, I would like to have taken my ojiichan skydiving. He would have found peace in that great view—and the being above it all,” she said.

As a third-generation Japanese-American and as 2015 Miss Marianas, Jian has decided to make this connection and revelation her platform as the islands’ ambassador for the rest of the year.

As she celebrates her birthday, her gift to the islands, to Japan, and to the rest of the world is to share the gratefulness and importance of peace.

“After seeing and hearing stories of what our grandparents and their parents went through, we are so fortunate to live in a time of peace and we have to work constantly to ensure that we never forget the horrors of war,” said the young queen.

“My skydive flash-before-my-eyes experience helped me to see that, perhaps, I am destined, along with international supporters of peace in the world, not only to strengthen the relationship between the Marianas and Japan, but also reach out to all in helping to promote peace and goodwill locally and globally,” she said.

This November, Jian will be competing in the 2015 Miss International Pageant in Tokyo, Japan. (Stellar Marianas)