05/16/2026
"Two Junkos, One Town; Chance or Destiny?"
- article from the latest issue of Jefferson City Magazine, sharing some of the details about the life of our member, Junko Silva, written by Margaret Alexander.
https://jeffersoncitymag.com/humans-of-jefferson-city-junko-junko/
There’s a word in Japanese for the kind of coincidence that feels too precise to be random: unmei. It’s usually translated as destiny. Junko Steenson didn’t think much about destiny when she moved to Jefferson City. At sixty-some years old, she had made peace with her life—from being born in Kyoto to an American father and Japanese mother to being adopted and carried across the world. Then one day, a friend handed her a folded newspaper.
Look,” the friend said. “There’s another Junko in town.”
In all those decades living around the world, she had never met another person with her exact name.
The photo showed only the side profile of a woman, hard to identify. But the caption held a name that matched Junko’s in more ways than one—not only the same pronunciation, but the exact same Japanese characters.
That is rare even in Japan. Japanese names can be written using many combinations of kanji, and a single name can have dozens of variations. Yet Steenson and the other woman, Junko Silva, share the same characters, meaning “pure” and “child.” Steenson contacted Silva, sparking a rare and beautiful friendship.
Junko Steenson was born in Kyoto. Her American father, an Air Force pilot, was killed in World War II. Her mother raised her alone until an American couple began visiting and taking the little girl on outings.
One day, however, everything changed.
“Just before dawn, my mother and I went to the end of our street,” Steenson remembers. “The American couple was there. Even when you’re six, you can sense something isn’t right.”
She remembers her mother’s final words.
“I remember her saying, ‘Sayonara, Baby-san…’ before they took me away.”
The couple adopted her, brought her to the United States, and gave her a new name: Claudia May. Years later, she reclaimed her birth name.
She grew up as a military child, moving constantly and sometimes changing schools several times a year.
“If you didn’t like the kids, you knew you would be leaving soon,” she said. “But it also meant I never had the long-term friendships people here in Missouri have.”
In her twenties, Junko wrote to a county clerk in Kyoto, hoping to locate her mother. Finally, a translated letter arrived. Eventually, her mother wrote that she wanted to visit her in America.
Steenson remembers waiting at the airport in Minneapolis, wondering how she would recognize a woman she hadn’t seen since childhood. Then she noticed a small woman dressed in black, looking lost.
“I walked up and said her name—Hisai,” Steenson said. “She turned, and I knew it was her.”
Her mother stayed for two weeks. They talked through the questions that had shaped Steenson’s childhood. Later, her mother moved to Pennsylvania after marrying an American man. They remained in contact until her mother’s passing.
“For many years, I struggled with identity,” Steenson said. “It was good to finally belong somewhere—at least, sort of.”
Ten years ago, she was longing to settle down. Remembering the comfort and beauty of Missouri from childhood, she eventually chose Jefferson City.
Junko Silva’s path to the city was very different.
She was born in the Kagawa Prefecture. She later settled in Osaka, where she lived for more than thirty-five years and worked as a teacher.
Though she originally studied science, she earned multiple teaching certifications, started her own school, became a tea ceremony master, and hosted more than a hundred international homestay guests.
“It started with an Italian girl who needed a place for three months,” Silva said. “We became friends. Then she wanted to invite her boyfriend, then her family.”
So Silva listed her home on a homestay website.
“People came from Switzerland, Germany—many places.”
Years later, she married Stacey, an American visiting Japan on business. They lived together first in Osaka and then in California before eventually deciding to move closer to Stacey’s parents in Camdenton, Missouri. While visiting nearby Jefferson City, Silva fell in love with the architecture along Main Street.
“I told Stacey,” she laughed, “‘this is where I want to live.’” “Missouri people are very kind and sweet.”
She also likes the four seasons; they remind her of home.
Friends in Japan, she joked, barely know where Missouri is. They recognize California, New York, Texas, Florida—but not this place in the middle of the country.
Yet this is where Silva says she wants to live and die. She now serves on the Old Munichburg Association board, attends Central Church, and plays in the church bell choir. She also writes about Missouri on a Japanese blogging platform, sharing her experiences in Jefferson City.
For most of her life, Junko Steenson didn’t feel like she fully belonged anywhere—too American for Japan, too foreign for America, always the new kid on another base.
For most of her life, Junko Silva never imagined that a name so ordinary in Japan could become rare and meaningful in a town her friends had never heard of.
And yet here they are: two Junkos in Jefferson City, their lives written in the same characters, their stories finally overlapping.
In a country built on strangers becoming neighbors, they are proof that sometimes the world loops back on itself in the most unlikely place.
For most of her life, Junko Steenson didn’t feel like she fully belonged anywhere—too American for Japan, too foreign for America. Junko Silva never imagined that a name so ordinary in Japan could become rare and meaningful in a town her friends had never heard of. And yet here they are: two Jun...
