I found my grandfather's journal in a box after he passed. He wrote in English. He never told us he spoke English.

My grandfather passed in November at 91. He was a quiet man. Fisherman for forty years, then retired, then small garden, then smaller garden, then a chair by the window. He spoke Tohoku dialect. He watched the news. He did not discuss his feelings. After the funeral my mother and I went through his belongings. There was very little. He had not been a man who accumulated things. In a box under his bed, inside a wooden case I had never seen, there were 14 notebooks. Western composition books. College-ruled. The kind you buy at a stationery shop. The first page of the first notebook said, in careful handwriting: "My name is Takeshi Mori. I am 44 years old. I am learning to write in English. My teacher is a dictionary." The notebook was dated 1977. I sat on his bedroom floor for a long time. $5 and I will tell you what was in them. I have read all 14. I have not told my mother everything I found. Some of it I needed to sit with first. This is me sitting with it. 🙏