Colleen Wing was the daughter of Professor Lee Wing, a professor of Oriental studies at New York's Columbia University. Her mother, Azumi Ozawa, was apparently killed by an unknown assailant while Colleen was still a child.[3] Colleen grew up in the mountains of northern Honshu in Japan, where she was raised by her grandfather, Kenji Ozawa. Kenji's other children died in World War II. Kenji trained his only grandchild in the arts of the samurai, which his own ancestors had been in the time of the daimyo.