Pen Pals Meet After 32 Years Of Letters

A Helena resident and a Japanese woman who corresponded as pen pals for 32 years finally met face to face.

“I got to see that she is a real person,” Claudene Carkeek said of Toshiko Oyama.

They spent two days together last month in Guam. Carkeek was visiting her daughter, who is a teacher.

Carkeek was 13 when the two began writing. In a letter to a Helena school, Oyama had asked for correspondents who were her age.

“In the beginning, we were drawn together because we were so different,” Carkeek said. “But later it was because we had a lot in common.”

As the years passed, she said, it was similar experiences and a strong belief in family that produced a bond.