Born to a U.S. soldier and an Okinawan mother, blinded at birth by a midwife who mistakenly gave him the wrong eye drops, and abandoned by his parents, Aragaki Tsutomu overcame obstacles to become a renowned tenor singer, inspirational speaker, and mentor (1999 Nihon TV documentary, ENG subtitles)
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Apologies for the poor quality of the video, which I digitized from VCR many years ago. I borrowed the original VCR tape from a friend, and it was lost long ago. The video is distorted in places, but I felt that the story was very compelling, so I took the time to add English subtitles and share this video with the wider community.
Aragaki Tsutomu was born in Yomitan Village, Okinawa, in 1952 to a Mexican-American father, who was a U.S. serviceman stationed at Kadena Air Force Base, and a Japanese mother. Tragically, at birth, the midwife who attended to him accidentally gave him the wrong eye drops, blinding him for the rest of his life. After his parents divorced when he was one year old, his father returned to the U.S. and his mother remarried. His mother decided to abandon him, so his maternal grandmother cared for him in his childhood. He struggled with feelings of abandonment and anger towards the midwife who blinded him, and his parents who left him. But he was able to overcome these feelings as he was adopted by a kind pastor and his accepting family. In time, he became a renowned tenor singer and a Christian pastor giving motivational speeches and performances all over Japan.