Mary Ann Vaughn citizen of Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, a.k.a Marianne Wilson, was the subject of a widely-publicised and highly controversial case in international family law decided in the Tokyo High Court

Tokyo High Court

is a high court in Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The Intellectual Property High Court is a special branch of Tokyo High Court....

 in 1956, Sweden v. Yamaguchi

Sweden v. Yamaguchi

Sweden v. Yamaguchi, otherwise known as in the matter of Marianne Wilson, or in the matter of Mary Ann Vaughn, is a highly complex decision in international family law which touches on questions in law still unresolved over fifty years later. The formal name of the action was Israel Karl-Gustav...

. Mary Ann Vaughn became the ward of the Swedish Ambassador to Japan, Tage Grönfall and later Frederick Almquist, and resided in the Swedish Embassy in Tokyo.

Birth and Ancestry

Mary Ann Vaughn was born the only child of James A. Vaughn (May 7, 1925- February 3, 2003) and Vivienne Joy Wilson (b. November 2, 1929-August 5, 1950), in Bluff Hospital

Bluff Hospital

Bluff Hospital is a hospital and clinic active in the medical care of foreign residents of Yokohama, Japan....

 in Yokohama, Japan on April 17, 1949. Her father was a US national employed under contract with the United States Military Administration of Occupied Japan. Her mother was a Swedish national, of three generations of Swedish citizens resident in Japan. She was descended from John Wilson

John Wilson (Captain)

John Wilson was the Anglicized name of Captain Frederick Walgren, a Swedish sailor and o-yatoi gaikokujin who was active in the development of British-Japanese ties in the late 19th century....

 and Sophia Wilson

Sophia Wilson

Sophia Wilson was a Japanese courtesan who married Captain John Wilson. She anglicised her name from Naka Yamazaki to Sophia Wilson, and adopted her son, Nils Wilson...

, née Naka Yamazaki

Yamazaki

The are descendants of a samurai clan from Kawagoe in the Kantō region. The Yamazaki line dates from the 18th century, and their land was awarded by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Edo Period.- Descendants :...

, her grandparents, and Professor John Wilson.

Vivienne Wilson had been weakened by the privations of World War II, and contracted tuberculosis during James Vaughn's absence to the United States, during which Mary Ann was cared for by a nanny, Fumi. Vivienne died on 5 August 1950, the very day of passage of private legislation permitting her to immigrate to the United States. She was buried in the Geijin Boche, the Foreign Cemetery

Foreign cemeteries in Japan

The foreign cemeteries in Japan are chiefly located in Tokyo and at the former treaty ports of Nagasaki, Kobe, Yokohama, and Hakodate. They contain the mortal remains of long-term Japan residents, and are separate from any of the military cemeteries.-Tokyo:The Tokyo foreign cemetery is a section...

 overlooking the port in Yokohama

Yokohama

is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...

, Japan.

Early life

After the death of her mother, Mary Ann Vaughn was placed under the guardianship of Professor John Wilson, with nanny Fumi Kaneko (later Fumi Yamaguchi) in custodial care. Due to the privations of the postwar period, John Wilson sailed to Sweden with his wife and children in 1952. Mary Ann was to accompany them, but due to an outbreak of whooping cough, she was to sail on the next ship. However, Yamaguchi absconded with Mary Ann, and Yamaguchi destroyed the child's records, raising her under claim of an abandoned American orphan in the slums of Yokohama.

Media

The story of Mary Ann Vaughn has been extensively covered by the popular press, and is of considerable interest to organizations such as the The Japan Children's Rights Network ( Non-Japanese Awarded Custody of a Child in Japan).