CG Sunaga visits “Miss Kagawa” the US-Japan Friendship Doll in North Carolina

    On March 30th, Consul General Sunaga visited the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh and was received by Roy Campbell, Curator and Director of Exhibits to take a tour. One of the reasons for the visit was the doll on display in this museum, Miss Kagawa (named for the Prefecture in which it was made), one of 58 that were sent to the United States from Japan as part of the friendship doll exchange between Japan and the US back in the 1920s.

    This museum received Miss Kagawa in 1927, along with accessories such as furniture and clothes, after being exhibited with other dolls in San Francisco.　After the attack on the Pearl Harbor, many of the American dolls in Japan were lost and many of the Japanese dolls in America were packed away. Miss Kagawa, however, was kept on display at the museum and turned out to be the only doll in the U.S. to remain on exhibit throughout the war.

    According to the website of Yoshitoku Co. Ltd, a Japanese leading doll maker, 334 dolls out of more than 12,000 American dolls that were sent to Japan from the US and 47 Japanese dolls that were sent to the US from Japan during the friendship doll exchange in 1927 and 1928 remain today.　(https://www.yoshitoku.co.jp/user_data/a_partner.php)

    30 years after the end of the war, those Japanese dolls were sent back to Japan for repairs. So was Ms. Kagawa who returned to Japan in 1998 for a second refurbishing. When she came home in North Carolina in 2000, there was a welcome home ceremony conducted in Raleigh.

Curator and Director of Exhibits, Roy Campbell explaining the history of the doll to CG Sunaga

Miss Kagawa on display in the Nature’s Exploreres Hall

Curator and Director of Exhibits, Roy Campbell explaining the friendship doll exchange

Miss Kagawa displayed with her furniture

From Left, Curator Campbell, CG Sunaga, Honorary Consul General Robinson in front of the museum

Label indicating Miss Kagawa was the only friendship doll to remain on display during WWII