This is treasure

Later, after Yoko Takegawa had hung up with her sister in Sanjo City and had telephoned this stranger in Connecticut, it began to sink in. Her father had seen her face before he died; he had held her image near his heart during the battle. This realization, even so late in life, lessened a hurt she never knew she harbored and softened a sadness that had hardened long ago. “My daddy carried that letter with my picture in his body, in his bosom,” she said during a recent interview at her home. “I felt something, a spirit, come down in my body. This is treasure, a treasure that carried so much love to me. Before, I go to school with his money. But now, he sends his love to me.”

Lizette Alvarez, "U.S. Veteran Returns Iwo Jima Relic to Daughter of Japanese Soldier," New York Times, 18 Sep 2009,
www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/nyregion/20iwo.html.