Schmitz in Japan Family Mysteries

Location: Osaka, Japan
Surnames/tags: Schmitz Laemmle

My grandparents moved from Germany to Japan in 1905, and moved back from Japan to Germany around 1948. My mother was born in Kobe, Japan, in 1929, and grew up in Osaka.

I am hoping to learn more about their lives in Japan ... whether my grandparents arrived together or separately, their port of entry, where they lived, their education and work there, where they spent the war years, and so on. My mother and her parents are all deceased, and my mother had no siblings, so I have few sources.

Strangely, there are also no birth or death notices in Germany that I've been able to track down online.

Paul Schmitz (engineer), Emma Schmitz (born Laemmle), and daughter Erika Elfriede Schmitz