MAKING LOVE BY POST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22099, 1 November 1933, Page 4

MAKING LOVE BY POST

ENGLISHMAN’S ROMANCE JAPANESE GIRL AS BRIDE. A British “ Tommy,” taken from school at the age of 12 to follow the plough, lias made himself ,' a master of Persian and Hindustani, married an aristocratic Japanese girl, and secured an appointment as official translator and coach tor the higher examinations in Urdu for officers in the Indian Army. “ I rvas born in Norfolk,” the former “Tommy,” Mr/Judd, said a few weeks ago, “ the son of an agricultural labourer, I left school at the aie of 12, and until I joined the army I worked as a ploughboy. In 1910 I came with my regiment to India, and I have never had an opportunity of going home since. 1 found I had an aptitude for languages, and began, in my spare time, to study Hindustani and Persian. “ When the war came I saw service in, Mesopotamia. My knowledge of Persian enabled me to make myself useful in all kinds of ways as an interpreter, as well as serving as an ordinary soldier in the ranks. Meanwhile \ read a lot, and 1 came to have a great admiration for the Japanese. They -appeared to me to be a wonderful race, so virile, patriotic, and unspoiled. I began to dream of marrying a Japanese wife.” After the war. through a Christian mission in Japan, Mr Judd got into correspondence with a Japanese girl belonging to a noble family who had been “ cut off with a shilling” because she adopted Christianity. She was a university graduate, and earned her living as a teacher.

The pair became engaged, still without seeing each other, and then began a long struggle to secure a passport for the girl, for under Japanese law an unmarried girl can only receive a passport with the consent of her parents. At last these difficulties were overcome, the girl arrived, and was married to Mr Judd an hour after landing at Calcutta. Meanwhile. Mr Judd had passed the higher standard in Urdu and earned a prize of £3OO, hitherto accorded only to officers. After their marriage the couple were desperately poor for a time, but Mr Judd “won through” at length and achieved his present position.