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Coming to America wasn't easy. Her traditional Japanese parents, who had given up on the idea of their fiercely independent daughter ever getting married, wanted her to live at home and go to dental school. But with her ambitions focused on being a commercial artist, Nobuko Nagaoka knew from an early age that she wanted to move to the states. At the age of twenty, speaking no English, she attended the University of Michigan to learn her second language. Nine months later she was raped.
"You have to understand, being in this country to study art had been my dream. I had wanted this for a long time. I knew if I told my parents what had happened they would make me come home, that I would have to give up on all of that. So I didn't tell."
"What did I do? What's funny is that when I look back on my journal at that time, over twenty years ago, I see that writing did help me get through this. I wrote in that journal, day after day. For me it helped a great deal, I could say whatever I wanted and I would not be judged. Of course I barely spoke English at the time, so on page after page the journal is Japanese. Only the word rape is in English. I had no other word for what had happened to me. Now I talk about it in a very matter of fact way. I have gone on. I refuse to feel shame, to feel dirty. I only feel lucky to be alive."
Today she is living the life she imagined for herself when she was younger, working as a creative director and designer, married and crazy about her two dogs. "Most of the time being raped seems very far away. Time does that. But the thing that has stayed is my anger. Every time I hear about this happening to other women, I feel that again. Maybe that part will never change."
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