Will and EddieEddie Takano from Tokyo, Japan, chats with Will Rogers in downtown Claremore.
Will and Eddie
Museum visit
Will Rogers visited Japan when Tokyo was Tokio. Eddie Takano from Tokyo has been to the United States 63 times, but last weekend was his first to be in Claremore and learn about Will Rogers and his rich heritage in Rogers County.
When Will was in Tokio he wrote (for the Saturday Evening Post) that he got so good with chopsticks he could catch flies with them. When in Claremore, do as Claremoreons do, and Takano ate steak at Mattie’s and enjoyed the fare at Hammett House.
The frequent U.S. flyer said, “I could go to other countries … but I stick with the United States.”
He really came to Oklahoma to gather information for a book he intends to write about the 100-year-old state — and the Indians who occupied the land before statehood.
“I knew about the history of Oklahoma beginning with the land run, but the people of Japan don’t know,” he said of his plans to write the book and share his experiences on a radio broadcast.
His visit to Claremore was unplanned. His first stop in Oklahoma was the LibertyFest celebration in Edmond, where he rode in the parade with Edmond’s mayor. From Ponca City he was scheduled to be in Bartlesville and was detoured here because of the flood.
In Claremore, the Will Rogers Museum staff and Tonya Andrews, Claremore Convention and Visitors Bureau executive director, hosted Takano.
He had a guided tour of the Museum with Andy Hogan, tour guide and storyteller, and Will’s birthplace at Oologah with Steve Gragert, Museums director. Fascinated with history of Route 66, Andrews took him to Davis Arms and Historical Museum, Totem Pole Park and Oak Hills Winery at Chelsea.
Full of questions about Will Rogers and his Cherokee ancestry, he said he had “yet to meet anyone who was full-blooded Native American.”
But he will. His next stop is historic Tahlequah, the Cherokee Heritage Center and Cherokee Village.
Takano first came to the United States in 1964 to study at Northeast Missouri State Teachers College in Kirksville. He returned home to be an educator and until retirement was a professor of American literature and English in Tokyo.
Although devoted to his homeland, he is a true lover of America and American writers — his favorites are Hemingway and Mark Twain. “That’s probably why I went to Missouri,” he said with a laugh.
In his early 70s, this was to be his last visit to the United States, but Oklahoma has opened a new frontier. So, who knows?