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had expected, due to the tragedy. The President was a young, celebrated American hero, whom many Japanese adored at the time. He seemed different from other Presidents of the United States; he held a special place in many peoples hearts. His attractive speeches, presence in public, and photographs with his family in newspapers fascinated my mother and older sisters. A high school student then, I didn't know why he was killed. A big bright star seemed to have disappeared from the world. The scene of his assassination in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 P.M. , November 22, 1963, was stamped on my memory.
    In 1974, our family lived in Philadelphia because my husband was a graduate student at the Wharton School. Our first son was three then. At the end of the summer we visited President Kennedys birthplace, at 83 Beals Street, Brookline, Massachusetts. It was five years after the house had become a national historic site. Many tourists of all generations came on sightseeing buses. The house had three stories and was painted blue with white window frames. It looked small for a standard American house but was clean and noble. The Stars and Stripes made the house look grand. A tall guard wearing a blue uniform with a shoulder strap stood on the porch and gave the place a dignified atmosphere. Before they entered, tourists mostly looked at the front of the house at first and then up at the roof, as if they expected to see a cross at the top of a church spire. The glorious air that filled the inside of the house seemed to overwhelm all the tourists.
    Another Kennedy tragedy, the assassination of the President's brother Robert in 1968, may have made the house seem more sacred. In front of each room some of the visitors stood straight, as if they still felt a sense of loyalty to the President, and some had tears in their eyes, feeling sad about the life of the great young President. I knew that he had been the leader of the United States as well as a beloved son of the United States. I was sure the image of the President I had had in Japan was close to the one that the Americans had, too. At that time I was more interested in the reactions of the people than the interior decoration of the house, which was hard to see because of the crowd. I felt close to the American tourists sharing each moment with them in the house. The taped, confident voice of the Presidents mother resounded in each room. As I stood among these tall people I listened to her voice as if it were a lecture on how to make a happy home.
    After returning to Japan for about ten years, my husband was assigned to the New York branch of a Japanese bank. We resumed our American life in Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 1985, and on April 4, 1988, we visited the Kennedy house again. It was a rainy Monday. This time we took our younger son, who had been born in 1976. My husband drove there because the sightseeing bus didn't take the same route as in 1974. Twenty-five years had already passed since President Kennedy had been assassinated in 1963. It had stopped raining by the time we arrived. It was spring. Beals Street was silent. The wet trunks of the bare trees stood in a milky fog. Only a few cars were parked far apart on the right side of the slightly curving street. When I saw that the color of the house had been changed to green, I was disappointed because it had lost its stately appearance. We didn't see a guard on the porch. The front door was closed and there was a sign that said the entrance was in the back. We went to the back and rang the doorbell as if we were visiting our neighbor. A young female guide welcomed us and showed us to the basement, where we waited for about fifteen minutes until the other visitors came down. The taped voice of Mrs. Rose Kennedy echoed throughout the house as it had in 1974. Another guide, a middle-aged man, took two elderly ladies downstairs as they finished touring inside. The tourists silently went out of the house and we were the only tourists