Episode 4: Teruko Growing Up Moonie

In the early days of the Moonies, members all lived together in centers across the country and world. But when the second generation were born many families decided to move out and try something new: being totally separate from and yet a part of society. That’s what the second generation had to juggle, all the time and every day. Hideo and Teruko talk about the struggle to understand identity and belonging as the second generation.
 
 
TRANSCRIPT
News Announcer [00:00:01] A decade ago, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon was accused of controlling the minds of young people creating so-called Moonies.
News Announcer [00:00:08] So called Moonies, followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon head of the Unification Church who became well-known in the early 80s for his mass wedding ceremonies.
Interpreter [00:00:16] Do you pledge to establish an eternal family with which God can be happy.
Crowd [00:00:24] Yes!
Interpreter [00:00:25] We are talking about absolute fidelity here. If anybody deviates from this God-given principle they are bound to hell.
News Announcer [00:00:35] But the church has a different plan for the second generation.
2nd Gen [00:00:38] I felt like we weren't equipped for the world. You know we aren't just like this bubble.
2nd Gen [00:00:43] To me it sounds culty. I know it's what brought our parents to church but it's not what keeps me in the church.
2nd Gen [00:00:48] Even if I'm not doing everything that they want me to do, or I don't believe everything that they believe we still have this like line that connects us.
Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:10] My name is Hideo Higashibaba. For the first 22 years of my life I was a member of a cult called the Unification Church. You might know them as the Moonies. I was born into the Unification Church and so were thousands of other people all over the world. This is Growing Up Moonie, stories from people who grew up in the church like me. People who joined the church as adults are called first generation and people born into the cult like me are called second generation blessed children or BCs. When first generation joined most of them gave up their worldly possessions and moved into church centers all over the country. My family lived in one of those centers in Boston. Every day the adults would go out fundraising or evangelizing and left their kids with a couple of other missionaries in a makeshift nursery. When I was born I was too small to be in the nursery so I spent the first year of my life with my mom at her meetings or the lectures she did on the church's teachings. When I was 2, my family moved out of the center and joined the hundreds of other Moonie families trying something new; being totally separate from and yet a part of society. That's what the second generation had to juggle all the time and every day. The next person I spoke with for this project was Teruko who was friends with my older sister Yojin when we were kids.
Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:48] I'm really happy to connect with you I feel like we spent a lot of time to get always you in Yojin spent a lot of time ago those kids and I kind of idolized you. And then when you moved away it's sort of like I don't know and everything felt like it changed.
Teruko [00:03:01] Yeah I mean I am the center of a lot of people's lives.
Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:04] Pretty, pretty humble and modest I can see as well.
Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:11] Teruko's family lived in Gloucester near a lot of other Moonie families. She went to school with a lot of other BCs and saw them every week at church. I always felt like an outsider, even at church. But I remember Teruko was in the thick of things, playing with the other kids, tearing around morning garden with Yojin and getting into trouble for running off into the woods. When she was in middle school Teruko's family moved to Omaha. She says the church community out in Nebraska was a lot more spread out and isolating.
Teruko [00:03:45] There is actually a girl in