Haru

Haru

June 19, 2014

Haru Tokuno was born on December 29, 1910. She was not named after the season of Spring (which is “haru” in Japanese), but for a word in one of her father’s haiku poems, evocative of that season. For the first ten years of her life, she was to be the only girl among a scrabbling group of four brothers. This had its advantages and disadvantages. She quickly became the joy of her father, who despite being the son of a samurai had enough sons to not despise the one daughter. She was specially treated, perhaps not only because she was the only girl, but because of her delicate nature. She was always of very tiny build, despite a very durable quality about her that would allow her to survive a number of hardships throughout her life. One of those hardships was her brothers, who treated her the way brothers often treat sisters.

When she went to school, she had had almost no exposure to the English language, especially its literary side. Tony, being three years older, had to help orient her to this strange environment. Their mother would note that Haru followed Tony around like a lost little puppy. Not wanting any part of a maternal image, Tony treated her gruffly. Haru usually got lots of dolls for Girl’s day and other occasions and Tony and her younger brother Ted, would take the fraternal pleasure of pulling their heads off. Even a sweet looking, beautiful Japanese doll that Haru treasured among all others was not immune from this decapitation ritual.

The people in the neighborhood were unusually kind to her. When she walked the mile to school, young boys would offer to carry her books. Their next door neighbor to the south, Alice Chase, took a special liking to Haru and welcomed into her into her house for cookies or other treats and take her shopping or to church. Being an unmarried lady with no children of her own, she directed her love at this petite Japanese girl who was so quiet and well mannered. When she died tragically it is no wonder that the 11 year old Haru suggested that her newest sister be named Alyce.

By this time, Haru, now the sister of two little girls, as well as all those brothers, had to spend a lot of time helping her mother attend to the endless routine of labor in their camps. Haru had to be like a mother to her sisters, feeding them, changing them, and keeping an eye on them for Suye, who had enough to worry about. Haru also had to do all of the family laundry. Coming home from school each day she had to scrub the dirty clothes with the wash board in a tub, after filling the tub with water heated on a wood stove. Then she would have to hang all the clothes on laundry lines that seemed to stretch endlessly in the back yard.

By the time she was in high school, she was used to such work. Ironically, the school officials took one look at her tiny body and told her she could not participate in the Physical Education classes with the other girls. She was not always in good health. In her junior year in high school, she was in the hospital with a bad case of measles. Like all her siblings, she attended Oroville High School, trailing along after her brother, who was a senior the year she started. They were among very few Japanese Americans there, so she did not date, although she counted as her best friends, three hakujin girls, including Mabel Reynolds and Iris Hawkins. She had grown up with them since grammar school when they used to collect rocks to assemble into toy houses they could play with as though they were matrons of grand estates. Aside from spending time with her friends, Haru was not very active in high school, there was too much work to be done at home for her to enjoy any extracurricular activities.

When she graduated from high school in 1930, a respite was in sight. Her family decided to send her to Armstrong Business College in Berkeley. She spent only six months there before Tony came to get her, telling her that the family needed her too much to let her stay in school. Going to business school in Berkeley was not a total loss, however, as she was able to attend church there where she met a studious looking Japanese man named Kozo Fukushima. He should have looked studious because he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley, where he eventually earned a Master’s Degree in electrical engineering. He had received his undergraduate degree there in 1929 as a foreign student. Even though her family had taken her far from the ivy covered halls of Berkeley, Kozo held fondly his memory of the kind, fragile young women he had met in their church. He wrote to her regularly and was even able to visit her at Palermo two or three times. On one of these occasions, he asked Bunda and Suye for permission to wed their eldest daughter. It was granted. They married in the Old Palermo Church on June 18, 1933. He was 30, she was 23.

They were a closely bonded couple who were meant for each other. Kozo was already beginning to bald. He was short, not too much taller than 5 feet tall, and wore eyeglasses. Haru was very small in stature with a long, thin face. She was about the same height as Kozo. Neither was what anyone could call attractive, but they were both possessed of good hearts, very decent young people who cared about each other and were willing to work hard to become successful. They were not aware that day in June of how hard life would become for them. A day after the wedding, as she and Kozo were leaving for their new home together in Los Angeles, Haru got an inkling of their future. As he bid the couple farewell, Bunda Tokuno began to cry, uncharacteristically. His eldest daughter asked him why he was crying and he replied that he knew he would never see her again. He must have had a premonition.

They had one good bit of fortune. They knew a couple, Mr. And Mrs. Mugi, who had located for them a brand new, affordable apartment just above a garage in Boyle heights. They would make it their home for three years. Since the Mugis were next door, they would also know someone else living in the area.

When the honeymooning couple arrived at their apartment in Los Angeles several days later, they rested a day, then Kozo began to sort through all his mail, finding many congratulatory letters and telegrams. One of the telegrams, though, was from his new brother-in-law, Tony. It told them that Bunda had passed away just two days after they had said good-bye to him in the dusty driveway of the Palermo home. Stunned, Haru caught a plane flight to San Francisco so she could be with her family in their grief. From San Francisco, a harrowing ride in a two seat biplane, and a trolley train ride to Oroville got her there in time for the funeral.

Just a year later, tragedy struck again after Haru became pregnant. The doctor told her that her uterus was too small, that the child would have to be aborted. Two other miscarriages later, the doctor told her that if she ever got pregnant again, either she would have to have another abortion or die trying to give life to a child. Kozo reluctantly told her that he would not be able to have a life with a child without a mother to care for it, so the couple chose to spend their years childless.

At the same time Kozo was frustrated by his inability to get a job using his education in Engineering. Since he had finished school, all he had been able to do was work for the Japanese Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Fujioka, his boss, was very kind, having even given him tickets to go to Palermo for Bunda’s funeral. Still, he was an Engineer, not a public relations man. It soon became clear that between the Depression and racial discrimination against him, he would never get a job with an American firm. He decided that he and his bride would need to go back to Japan so he could begin a career.

They moved to Japan in 1936 and Kozo soon found a job with Nippon Electric Corporation. Certainly Haru was sad to be so far from her family, but she was determined to go where her husband went, just as her mother had followed her father to a strange land 30 years before. For the next five years, she could at least count on occasional letters from home, blurry black and white photos of her nephews, her brothers and sisters, and her beloved mother. For almost a year from fall of 1937 to fall of 1938, Haru visited her family in Palermo, taking her mother back with her in 1938 for a return to her homeland. Although the travel was slow by ship across the wide Pacific, these visits made the world seem a bit smaller. At the end of 1941, these all stopped after the United States declared war on Japan.

They tried to get out of Japan, believing that Japan would be far less safe a place during the war. Of course, history proved them right. Unfortunately, the United States had laws that now prevented Kozo, a Japanese citizen, from going there, so they were trapped. Early in the war, when Japan was enjoying victories in its Pacific campaign, the Fukushimas did not notice the effects of the war. By 1943, however, food had become scarce and rationing had begun. Each family was given only one daikon pickle, 2 to 3 inches long, some rice, and whatever fish was available to eat. Hunger became a problem. Haru was able to find some napa (cabbage) seeds to plant in their yard and that helped a bit.

Then the bombing started. The Allied forces had pushed close enough to Japan so that their heavy bombers were able to reach Tokyo and the other cities. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like with the city all blacked out, the scream of sirens tearing through the night, and the terrible explosions. Since many Japanese houses were still made of flimsy material, such as rice paper, fires easily spread as a result of the bombs, increasing the loss of life. Nippon Electric evacuated the families of its employees to areas they though would be safer. Haru was moved to Okayama sine it was close to Hiroshima, a city largely ignored by the bombings.

In August 1945, one bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that destroyed the entire city. This was the atom bomb. An hour away in Okayama, Haru felt the explosion and lost at least one friend, her hairdresser, to radiation sickness following the fall-out from the bomb.

Kozo still worked in Tokyo. Only three days after the Japanese surrendered he was ordered to report to General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters. MacArthur was the commanding general of the allied forces and was now, in effect, the military ruler of Japan. When the victorious American army occupied Japan, Kozo had to get used to having soldiers question him about his company’s role in manufacturing weapons for Japan. This was because he spoke English so well.

The family had totally lost contact with Haru and Kozo during the war. No one knew if they were safe or even alive after the terrible bombing that had devastated the Japanese Islands almost constantly in 1944 and 1945. Haru’s younger brother, Shiro, had been sent to Japan by the U. S. Army to help the Japanese population with their recovery from the damages of war.  He set about using what spare time he had to try to find his sister and brother-in-law. All he had was the address they had sent before the war, so he went there first. A woman who lived there, Sei-chan, told him that they had moved to Okayama, but that he could probably still find Kozo at Nippon Electric’s offices in Tokyo.

When he got there, he was amazed to see all the employees shivering and wearing long underwear. The company could no longer afford to heat the building. Kozo was not there at the time, so he sat at his desk and waited, conspicuous in his army uniform, in that cold office. When Kozo returned, he didn’t recognize his brother-in-law, who he had last seen when he was still in high school. What he saw was a soldier and he wondered what they wanted to ask him now. Shiro, though, recognized Kozo, stood up, shook his hand and asked him how he was. Hearing his voice and looking more closely at his face, Kozo was happy to realize that this was Haru’s younger brother. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Kozo told Shiro where his sister was now living.

Kozo did not tell Haru to expect her brother’s visit, so one day in late fall as she came home from work, she was very surprised to see Shiro standing there, smiling at her. He told her he was glad to see her alive and they immediately began to talk about all that had happened to the family since they were last in touch. When her sister Tey and her two daughters, arrived in Japan to be with her husband, Henry Imaoka, and Shiro’s wife, Asako, came to join him, a good portion of the Tokuno family was now assembled in Japan. Even though Henry and Tey were based north of Tokyo in Sendai, they were able to spend time together. It was a brief time. By 1948, Shiro and Asako had returned to America, with their newborn son (me). Even though Shiro came back for awhile and the Imaoka family was still there, Haru missed her native country.

Japan was a wretched place after the war. The buildings, those left standing, were all burnt out or ruined. The people were poor and hungry. There was much work to be done to rebuild the once proud land. Haru returned to the U. S. once in 1952 for a visit, but that only made her long to return for good. In 1956 an opportunity finally arose. The vice president of Northrup Aircraft, a major aviation firm in California, was visiting Japan. Kozo was translating for him. The man was impressed not only by Kozo’s skill with English, but his knowledge of engineering that he offered him a job in Los Angeles. He accepted and they made plans to go to California.

Ironically, Suye had been visiting with her daughters there for the past year. She was scheduled to go back to Palermo in March. Usually, when Haru had parted from her, Suye would be very sad. When she saw her oldest daughter off at Haneda Airport, though, she was happy to think that she would be able to visit her in California and she told Haru that. Waving goodbye to her mother, Haru, as with her father, had no idea she would never see her alive again.

Once she got over the shock of her mother’s death, Haru was able to begin to build a new life for herself and her husband in Gardena. They had been there about three years when the vice president of Northrup left. In the wake of his departure, Kozo was released from the company, despite the protestations of many of his co-workers, who found him to be a hard-working, capable employee. Kozo at once set about trying to convince his old company in Japan, Nippon Electric, to set up a headquarters in Los Angeles. Finally convinced of the worth of this idea, they made him the head of their new office in Newberry Park.

Meanwhile, Haru had gotten a clerical position with the federal government, so she could supplement the family income. In 1960, they settled into their final residence in Canoga Park. By this time, Kozo was a distinguished looking gentleman. He had lost most of his hair and his bald head and eyeglasses made him look like a college professor. When he died of cancer in 1978, I felt the loss very deeply because of the way he supported my early interests in science, once taking me to the La Brea tar pits and sending me books about electricity.

Tetsuji

Tetsuji

June 20, 2014

From the day of his birth, on February 2, 1914, Tetsuji had a different life carved out for him than his older brother and sister. Like them, he was born at home. Tony and Haru were given the brunt of the responsibility as the oldest brother and sister. Tony, who was aggressive and strongly motivated was well suited to be the primary heir to the family name. Haru was the model “big sister” who was almost like a second mother. From his childhood, Ted was easy going and very affable, but he was not particularly industrious like his older brother. His favorite activities were fishing and hunting, which he did with his brothers or with his chums, George Lavey, Jim Huse, and Doc Huse (Jim’s cousin). They were a nimble, athletic bunch, so they also liked to play baseball, football, or go swimming. Sometimes they would play with Ted’s brothers, Tony and Tim. Suye was not fond of this American game of football that they played in the ploughed fields, getting mud into every seam of their clothes.

He was not an extrovert, but he liked to be around people. He went to Palermo Elementary School on the heels of his older brother and sister, then went on to Oroville Union High School where he became the manager of the baseball and football teams. He was extremely popular among his class-mates for his personality. He had a wonderful sense of humor and seemed to get along with everyone. On the other hand, he was not a scholar and his parents would get upset when he brought home a report card with “Ds” on it. It didn’t bother Ted too much, though. Even though he was not scholarly in an academic sense, he liked to read and spin his own brand of down to earth philosophy.

Through high school he had helped his father and older brother around the farm. He would make deliveries of the farm’s fruits and vegetables to the nearby markets. He did this awhile after finishing high school, then decided to seek greener pastures. From 1933 to 1936, he stayed with his sister Haru and her husband, Kozo, in Los Angeles. He had read a lot of books about flying and dreamt of becoming a pilot, but his father had always opposed it and he never went against his father’s wishes. He never considered joining the military, even though he had been a cadet in high school and it might have given him a chance to do some flying. He would come back to Palermo in the summer to help out on the farm. His longest regular job was in a fancy produce department in a Beverly Hills market. When Haru and Kozo left for Japan in 1936, Ted stayed with the Hirano family and became friends with one of their boys, Ben. He also spent some time staying with the Uehara family.

When he returned to Palermo in 1940, it was to help his brother on the farm, delivering produce to the Bay Area and assisting in other ways. He had bought a roadster in LA. It was a convertible. He had picked up some sporty tastes from southern California and he often spent his nights out late, after which he make his younger sisters clean his car.

Ted was strikingly handsome as a young man. He was tall for a Japanese, close to six feet. He was slender and very elegant looking. He could have been a male model in a later period in this country. When the Tokuno family was sent to Topaz, his arrival there stirred a commotion among the young ladies. According to my Aunt Meriko, he was the best looking guy they had ever seen. They all rushed to get a first hand look at him. They had to have had their enthusiasm dampened considerably in seeing Lucille Tanaka arm in arm with him, a happy young bride to be.

He had met Lucille while the Tokuno family was at Tule Lake. A very artistic and creative person, she was teaching dancing for the camp. Meanwhile, he was managing the camp hog farm. Much as his brothers did, he wanted to be active while in camp, doing something creative. It is not likely he had any shame about being in charge of the pigs. More likely he was just shy; not the kind of person who would sign up to meet this beautiful young lady tutoring the other internees at their dance steps. Instead, he got a mutual friend to introduce him to her and things moved very quickly from there as evidenced by their engagement on March 15 after they left Tule Lake for Topaz. They actually got married in Ogden, Utah on September 9, 1944.

Not long after his marriage, he found that Lucille was pregnant. Ted felt that the camp was not the kind of place where he wanted to raise a family. He was able to secure a job in nearby Mesa, Idaho as foreman of other evacuees working in an apple orchard. They found a cozy little cottage to rent and shortly, Ted and Lucille were the father’s of a happy little girl, Teresa, born on April 10, 1945. They lived in Idaho for awhile, farming. This allowed him to obtain an agriculture deferment like Tony, so, like Tony, he never saw any military action.

Shortly after the war ended, Ted and his young family spent some time in Chicago with Lucille’s family. He and Ben Hirano were able to find jobs doing auto body repair. They returned to Palermo with his family, but it was not long after that that he moved to Yuba City. He farmed a plot of land, which had belonged to George Uyeno, his sister-in-law Mary’s brother. Mary, who was heir to the land, decided that Ted should be given a chance to farm it and to live in the old house that stood on the property. On this land he planted 18 acres of peach trees on Franklin Boulevard and he and his family stayed in that house for the rest of his life.

In 1952, they took a trip back to Chicago to visit his in-laws again. There Lucile became pregnant and in 1953, on September 24, she gave birth to a son, Dean, who was to grow to be the most creative person in the family, winning numerous awards as a photographer.

Farming life was not always a prosperous one, but Ted did whatever it took to assure his family’s well being. Part of the problem was that the amount of land he had was not enough to sustain a family of four. Worse, the trees were aging and so were not as productive. In 1958, he considered moving back to Chicago, but prospects were no better there. He tried to supplement their income by leasing more land on which he grew lucrative crops like tomatoes. They required very hard work, but it was enough to keep them going. In 1961, after a particularly poor harvest, he took a job with CalTrans in Sacramento, living with his brother Shiro. I remember those days with some fondness, as he and I shared a love of seafood and he would bring home the kinds of fish and shellfish we both loved to eat. In the cold mornings, he would gently chide me for sitting on my hands to keep them warm, asking me if I was doing some new kind of meditation.

Ted became a leading member of his community. Being very civic minded he became president of the Franklin Farm Bureau, a member of the Farm Home Association, and a two time trustee of the Franklin Elementary School. In that latter capacity, it gave him great pride to be able to award diplomas to both of his children as they, in turn, graduated from the school. He continued to pursue his childhood hobbies of hunting and fishing.

Teresa married in 1966, right after her graduation from Columbia University. She settled in New York with her husband, Larry Franks.  Dean graduated from the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, then pursued a very successful career as a professional photographer, winning national praise for the quality of his work. In 1989, he returned to his roots in Yuba City where he lives and photographs in his old home wife his wife, Amy, and their three daughters, Chloe, Hannah, and Asia as well as a youngest, son, Harrison.

In the fall of 1995 Ted suffered from a major stroke that left him unable to care for himself. Still powerfully proud, he would not allow himself to be dependent on his wife and children for his everyday survival. As much as they tried to care for them, he was determined to leave and died of starvation on September 30, 1996. Dean, honoring his father’s dignity by photographing his last days, won the prestigious national Ernst Haas Award for his pictures. They are a touching legacy of what Ted was as a man.

Yuzo

Yuzo

June 19, 2014

Yuzo, the middle child, was born in 1916 at the beginning of America’s involvement in World War I. He got his Americanized name from a part in a high school play, “Seven Keys to Baldpate”. He was “Tim” the chauffeur. He must have been so convincing that the name stuck and he later had it legalized. As with his older brother, Tetsuji, he was under a lot less pressure than Tsuneyoshi and it was perhaps that made him a fairly low key person. Or maybe he was just that way. As a very young boy, he was very shy. He was like that up until high school. Underlying this shyness was an assertive and sometimes mischievous nature. When he was three, Bunda was putting pepper plants in. He knew little Tim was trying to help, but when he looked back, Tim had pulled out of the plants out. Bunda scolded him gently but firmly.

Tim knew what he wanted. When he would grumble over what was being served for dinner, Bunda would send him away from the table without eating for the night. Later, whenever Tim didn’t like what his mother made for dinner, he would prepare his own, Suye reluctantly letting him do it. Another time, he was determined to try and catch a skunk, so with help from his brothers he set a trap one day. The next morning when he went to check the trap, sure enough, he had caught a skunk, but it also caught him. The skunk sprayed him square in the chest. He was banished from the house the rest of the day. He probably wished he could banish himself from his body. He jumped into a creek, clothes and all. Ted had to run home and get him a change of clothes.

This independent streak followed him into adulthood as he was the first of the Nisei to go to college, attending Chico State College from 1934 to 1936. While he was there, he did some boxing in P. E. and the annual “Scamper Day” they used to hold. He even sparred with semi-professionals and considered turning pro himself until a manager talked him out of it. He transferred to Sacramento City College and spent a year at Heald Business School. He worked as a “house boy” in private homes and boarding houses to support himself. One of his best friends in his college days was Yori Wada, who later became one of the most prominent nisei in California, serving on the University of California’s Board of Regents and the California Youth Authority Board.

His wandering through college stopped when he decided to join the military. He knew he was going to be drafted and he wanted to choose his branch of service. Since he was Japanese, both the Navy and the Marines refused to enlist him. As luck would have it he was drafted into the army in November of 1941, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He wanted to be in the Army Air Corp. but he found out he was color blind during one of his physicals at Camp Roberts in Santa Maria, California. This prevented him from flying.

A lot of the nisei drafted into the army were discharged once the war with Japan started, but Tim served throughout the war. Still, even as he served his native country, they were shipping him away from the West Coast because of his race. After Pearl Harbor was attacked, he and a large group of 80 other Nisei were sent to complete basic training at Camp Robinson, in Arkansas, on Feb. 6, 1942. They were not certain what to do with these soldiers, so they bounced them from camp to camp making them do a lot of dirty work. After Camp Robinson, they were sent to Fort Riley in Kansas, then to Camp Phillips. The irony is that they would not let him rejoin his family (because no Japanese were allowed in California), but they kept him in the army.

In February, 1943, President Roosevelt signed an order creating an all Japanese American Army unit, the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team. Tim was one of the first men assigned to that unit. He was actually promoted to corporal and became a drill instructor at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, for other Nisei going through training. Even in that role, he was subject to racial discrimination. Once when he went to the nearby town of Hattiesburg, a woman came up to him and said, “You’re a Jap, ain’t ‘cha?” True to his calm, but firm, character, Tim told her, “I don’t give a damn what you think of me, but respect the uniform I wear.”

The respect for the man in the uniform came with time. It is worth going into extra detail on the role of the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team and Tim Tokuno’s role in it. Just before the 442^nd was to be sent to Europe for the fighting, Tim, now a sergeant, was finally allowed to visit his family in Topaz. When he got there, a Captain at the gate asked him if he had any alcohol in his bag. Tim admitted that he had a fifth of whiskey and the Captain first said, “No whiskey allowed.” Then he changed his mind as he considered the soldier standing in front of him, saying, “Oh, go ahead and take it in sarge, helluva a war, isn’t it?” Once there, his mother cooked him the best dinner she could scrape together and told him “Whatever happens, don’t disgrace your country or your name—in other words, death before dishonor.” In May, 1944, Tim and his 442^nd mates were shipped to Naples, Italy, to join the Allied forces invading the Nazi stronghold. They added to their ranks, the veterans of the 100^th Battalion, made up mostly of nisei from Hawaii.

As a member of Company M of the heavy weapons group, Tim was called on to perform some dangerous duty.  As a sergeant , he was responsible for 21 men, 19 jeeps, and a weapons carrier all winding their way through narrow roads and passes in Italy and France. They set up the 81 mm. mortars and machine guns used in action and had to transport them from battle to battle. Tim was wounded by shrapnel in one of the more famous battles of the war, the fight for the Lost Battalion, and thought about applying for a Purple Heart decoration for those soldiers wounded in action. When he saw how seriously other men had been hurt, though, he figured he had just been scratched, so never applied for it.

The 442^nd saw their first action in June, 1944. They had the reputation of the 100^th to keep up and they more than equaled it, becoming a courageous and efficient fighting unit rarely seen in the tragic history of war. At one point, the Division commander had to ask them to slow down because the other units could not keep up with them, as they would advance as much as 20 miles in one day.

In October, the 442^nd was called upon to help rescue the “Lost Battalion,” a unit from Texas that had been surrounded and cut off by German forces. The men of the 442^nd fought fiercely, going from tree to tree against a much larger force that was protected by mortar fire, barbed wire, and mine fields. They were able to rescue the Texans, but at a cost that was greater than the reward. Although they had saved the lost battalion, 200 young nisei were killed and another 600 were wounded, including Tim. Shortly after that, a general wanted the men of the 442^nd assembled so he could thank them for their bravery. Only 700 of the units 4500 troops were able to stand in the ranks and the general asked where all the rest of the men were. The regimental Commander, Colonel Charles Pierce had to reply through tears, “You’re looking at the entire regiment. That’s all that’s left.”

There were other actions that were as inspiring. In March of 1945, with the war winding down, the Allies needed to capture a mountain fortress held by the Germans for over five months. This position was the Gothic Line perched on a mountain in northern Italy and it was supremely well defended and fortified. The only way they could think to assault the position was to conduct a surprise attack up the nearly vertical cliff of the mountain. To achieve total surprise, they had to start up the mountain while it was still dark, early in the morning. It was a frightening climb. As they struggled up the sheer cliffs, they heard a few odd sounds, like the wind blowing oddly past. Only later did they realize that it was the sound made by their falling comrades, who had the courage to keep from screaming as they lost their grips and fell to their deaths, not wanting to alert the enemy of the surprise attack and endanger their fellow soldiers. Even though this action was supposed to be a diversion, its success made it the main attack that led to the fall of the fortress. It was another heroic effort by the 442^nd.

By the end of the war, the 442^nd had participated in seven major campaigns and earned more decorations for bravery than any unit in United States military history. They also suffered 9486 casualties including 650 men killed in action. The total casualties were enough for each man to have been hurt twice.

Tim was discharged from the army on December 4^th, 1945 almost exactly four years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was able to return to his childhood home in Palermo by the 10^th of that month. His oldest brother, Tony, was trying to re-establish the family farming operation. For the next few years, Tim helped his brother with “Tokuno Brothers Farms, Inc.” It was good that most of their friends and neighbors welcomed them back with open arms, although Tim once ran into an old acquaintance in Oroville who refused to shake hands with him and went off muttering something.

One day, while Tim was hauling tomatoes to Matmor Cannery in Woodland, he noticed a pretty young lady who was helping the Kodani family pick tomatoes. Her name was Sumi Sasaki and it was not long before they were seeing a lot of each other. In 1948, they went off to Las Vegas to get married. They then settled in Los Angeles. On September 4, of 1950, they had a son, Steven Youzo. They spent a few years in Los Angeles where Tim tried other types of work, such as drapery, but his heart was really in farming. By 1951, they were back to the Sacramento Valley. A year later, a major tragedy overtook the whole Tokuno family when their second son, Timothy James, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome before he was even three months old.

In the early 50s, Tim helped his brothers, Tony at Palermo and Ted at the Ingram Ranch just off of Township Road near Gridley, California. From 1954 to 1957, after Ted moved on to Yuba City, Tim and Tony took over at the Ingram Ranch. Tim gravitated naturally to farming in Gridley. The land there was rich and the community was small, safe and friendly. In fact, it still is.

A daughter, Kathleen Ann, was born on February 8, 1954, followed by a third son, Michael Sueyoshi on February 25, 1957. That year, Tim moved his family to the Sheppard Ranch on the Biggs-Gridley Road for two years, then on to farm with Debbert Manes on Larkin Road for another year.

The Tim Tokuno family enjoyed a long period of stability leasing a large house and land at the prominent junction of Highway 99 and East Gridley Road, just south of the town center. As government regulations grew, it became more and more difficult for small farmers to be successful. Tim even had to rely on a few illegal immigrants for help. It was not unusual for him to lose workers as they were picked up by immigration authorities. They stayed there from 1960 to 1972 as the children grew to adulthood and the neighbors flocked there every summer to buy the produce, especially the tomatoes which were the best tasting ever grown by human hands. I remember those big, red, juicy tomatoes that were as good as eating candy.

All the children pitched in to help make the farm a success. It was not an easy life. In addition to the tragic loss of their second son, there were other calamities.  When Steve was five years old, he fell out of the attic at Palermo while he was playing with his cousin Don. When he was nine, he was hit by a pickup truck while he was crossing Highway 99. He was critically injured. When he was in college, he was again hit by a car that ran a stop sign on Highway 99.

Even with the hard work and the accidents, there was time for fun. Tim would take his boys to target practice with their guns and rifles so they would know how to use them safely. There were often farm picnics, notably the Butte family JACL picnics where the children could play with their cousins and the adults could visit. There were also games. One was a blindfold race that Tim joined with Steve when he was four. The fathers were blindfolded and the sons had to direct them. Steve hollered, “Go north, Dad. Go south.” It wasn’t much help. As the children grew, they took part in lots of school activities. Kathi was a cheerleader and Mike was active in sports.

Steve now lives in Seattle with his wife, Colleen. They are very successful in business together, doing a lot of travelling. Kathi married her sweetheart from high school, Dave Garretson, they have two sons, Tim and Noah. Mike worked as a counselor in the California State University system after receiving his Master’s degree there. He and wife Lupe have one daughter, Miyoshi.

For a veteran of the war, it must have warmed Tim a lot to see his family and his farm accepted by the community of Gridley. And they did accept him. In 1985, Tim was named Gridley Man of the Year for his contributions to the community. It was another moment to add to the family legacy of showing America what we could do.

Shiro

Shiro

June 19, 2014

Shiro Tokuno was born on December 17, 1918. It would appear that he was named after his Uncle Shiro, however, it is hard to be sure of this since “Shiro” means “fourth son” in Japanese and both he and his uncle were the fourth sons. It is likely that his nickname “Sheik” came from the neighbor boys' inability to pronounce “Shiro” correctly. Since Rudolph Valentino’s depiction of an Arabian lover was a powerful media image of the time, the nickname stuck. According to his sisters, Shiro was a feisty young man and, being the youngest of four boys, it is almost a sure thing that he had to learn to defend himself at a fairly young age. Throughout his life, he carried a scar on his forehead from a stick that was thrown at him by his older brother, Ted. Although that injury was accidental--Ted was trying to throw a grafting stick through a woodshed door, that Shiro was holding open for him--it shows the aggressive style of play among the Tokuno boys.

He had a typical brother-sister relationship with his younger sisters, Alyce and Teyko. During the summer months, he would go with his father to Oroville to distribute crates of tomatoes to the various grocers. Shiro would do the hard work of lifting the crates off of the Model T Ford truck and putting empty crates back on. Rough work for a ten year old. On the way home, his father would stop and buy him candy to share with his siblings, but when he got home, he would not share any of the candy with his little sisters until they had run to the persimmon shed and back. He was also very protective of them. He would always keep an eye on them as they were in the schoolyard to make sure that they were never the victims of cads or bullies.

A picture of him as he finished high school shows a rather reserved, even scholarly looking young man, slender with round eyeglasses. When he reached his full height, he was 5 feet 8 inches tall and so skinny he had to wear suspenders to keep his pants up. He was a good student, being the only one in his family to go to the University of California, but that look belied his basically competitive and strong personality. He was ruggedly handsome, but dated very little in high school or college, despite the way co-eds would hang around to catch a glimpse of him.

Shiro was very athletic. When he attended Oroville High School from 1933 to 1937, he tried out for a number of sports: football, where he played left guard on the line; basketball, in which he was a forward; baseball, and track and field and won varsity letters in football and track. His best sport may have been basketball, for he was a standout on the “C” level team in his first year. When he tried out for the “B” team, though, the coach did not even want to give him a chance, probably because of his race. Undaunted, Shiro asked the varsity coach for a try-out and not only did he make the team but he started.

In track and field, he put the shot and showed his overall athletic ability by asking the coach if he could do the pole vault. This is something he had practiced at home using bamboo poles, so the first jump he attempted cleared ten feet. This does not sound very spectacular nowadays when, using fiberglass poles, athletes are jumping around 20 feet, but it was quite an impressive feat back then. In his first league track meet, a championship meet, at Colusa, Shiro competed in the pole vault and tied for first place. He helped Oroville High gain first place in the league meet for the first time in its history.

In 1937, Shiro went away to College, joining his brother, Tim, at Sacramento City College. They stayed with a family friend, Kumao Nagata. He earned his way by working first with the National Youth Administration doing landscaping, then later as a houseboy for a well-to-do family in the Sutterville district of south Sacramento. Two years later, he applied and was accepted at the University of California at Berkeley. Somewhere in his childhood, he had learned to be very frugal. His mother used to praise him for his efforts to avoid placing a financial burden on his family in any way he could. Besides working his way through college, he would do other things, such as hitch-hike all the way from Berkeley to Palermo to save money. He met a lot of interesting people that way and was always sympathetic to hitch-hikers. I spent a lot of uncomfortable moments in his pick up truck sitting next to some stranger who smelled very much of the road, if not cheap wine.

At Cal he again demonstrated his athletic prowess by gaining a place on the Cal boxing team, earning the “Block C” letter as a varsity athlete. In his first year, he rented a room for $10 a month on Ellsworth Street, then later got a spot in the Barrington Hall co-op with other students, helping to cover costs by doing cooking, cleaning, and washing as all co-op members were supposed to do. He also worked for a time in the co-op store, as a waiter, then as head waiter. In his senior year, he was elected to be a member of the House Council. On the academic side he first majored in Commerce, then changed to Agricultural Economics, making steady progress toward his bachelor’s degree when the war broke out in 1941. Although he was able to finish his degree in May of 1942, he was not able to go through the graduation ceremonies in June. He had to join his family as they were making plans for their forced evacuation.

As Shiro helped his family get ready for evacuation to Tule Lake, he wondered what the war had in store for him. He had registered for the military draft earlier, getting a 2-S classification (student deferment) while he was in college. Now he was classified as 4-C, enemy alien, so he could not serve in the army, even if he wanted. In the meantime, he wanted to do something useful while in camp. He immediately applied his degree in camp doing agricultural work, joining the technical support staff and helping plan for the use of the 3000 acres of farm land they had nearby. Since all able bodied young men in the United States were serving in the armed forces, there was as shortage of labor, so it was not hard for the young nisei to gets jobs doing important work such as farming, By December, he was the Assistant Employment Officer and using information he received in that position, learned of an opportunity to work in Utah for a cannery. With his oldest brother, Tony, and a group of 18 other men to work there in June, 1943, partly in anticipation that the Tokuno family was to be transferred to Topaz in September of 1943 and partly because the cannery job paid more. It is also clear that he found life in the camp to be very boring and restrictive.

Ever restless, by December of 1943, he decided he wanted to go to the east coast to work. Going into the personnel office to ask for application forms for a job in Washington D. C., he saw a pretty young woman working there, Asako Maida. Earlier he had been introduced to her by Sam Sato, who knew Shiro from working with him in Ogden. Sam was an old boy-friend of Asako. He impetuously asked her if she would go to the New Year’s Dance with him. She did not seem enthusiastic, but Shiro was not one to take “no” for an answer. He dropped by later with his hat in his hand and said “You wanna go to a movie?” a little too casually, for Asako’s liking. It was like he was assuming she was going to say yes. They did go and they also went to the New Year’s Dance. Little did she know where this would lead, because he intended to ask her to marry him.

No one knows when Shiro decided to ask for Asako’s hand in marriage. Knowing him, it might have been on the spur of the moment; the beginning of a new year, 1944, and a new life. Unfortunately, it was not that clear cut, because Asako, astounded that anyone would propose in such a short time, did not give him an answer. Still, there must have been something in her eyes that said “yes” when he asked the question. He was confident enough to leave later that month for Washington D. C. to work in the War Relocation Authority (WRA) offices. He found a place to rent by himself at the corner of 17th and T Street, N.W. Anyone sifting through their old mail will find a lot of correspondence between the two of them dating from just after that January.

In April he, along with all other Japanese American Nisei, was reclassified as I-A for the U. S. Military draft, so in May 1944, Shiro volunteered for the Army. He briefly returned to Topaz to be with Asako and to prepare for the Military Intelligence Service, in which he would have to become very fluent and literate in Japanese. His brother, Tim, who had joined the army before the war, wrote from Europe to advise him not to join the infantry, besides, as recent years had shown, he wanted to find ways of applying his education and he could see that going into Intelligence work might be the best way to do it.

Although he saw a lot of Asako during this interval no plans for a wedding were set. She did not want to be married to a soldier fighting in a war far away, so her thought was to wait until he got back. In June, he reported for induction at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City, then was sent to Camp Savage in Minnesota before going to basic training at Ft. McClellan in Alabama later that month. Once his basic training was over, the Army sent him to Fort Snelling, near St. Paul, Minnesota. There he began intensive training in Japanese, learning to read and write Japanese as well as learning the techniques of interrogation, translation, and interpretation. It was a 10 month course of study, during which he spent six days a week attending class from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., then studying all evening.

In the meantime, Japanese-Americans who were in the camp, were beginning to make arrangements to leave for other parts of the country. The executive order placing them in the camps was intended mainly to get them away from the west coast area. In September of 1944, Asako and her two sisters, Meriko and Junko, went to Rochester, New York, where Junko, who was an accomplished violinist, had been accepted into the music conservatory. Their parents insisted that she be accompanied by her two sisters. Asako found work in a calendar factory, but did not work there for very long. A wedding was beckoning. Asako’s parents has already announced their daughter’s engagement in Topaz camp newspaper.

One year after Shiro asked her to marry him, Asako found herself in Minnesota. She stayed at the YWCA in St. Paul. Earlier, when on leave from training, Shiro had gone to Rochester where he presented Asako with an engagement ring. (Asako still has a newspaper clipping announcing this formal engagement with the sad note that she soon lost that ring down the kitchen sink while she was washing dishes.) Alyce Tokuno was also there and one evening as they and some friends were gathered around the kitchen table, they began to make collective plans for a wedding right there in Minnesota. Asako still had some reservations, since she knew that Shiro would be shipping to the Far East in a few months, but she did not require much convincing. Soon a date was set, a minister found, and friends were invited.

So it happened on February 17, 1945 that Shiro Tokuno wed Asako Maida. The ceremony was held in the home of the minister, Reverend Francis Hayashi. They were joined in the celebration by what friends and family could make it to Minnesota, but both Shiro’s mother and Asako’s parents were still in the camp. Things had happened so fast that they could not make arrangements in time, even if they could have afforded the cost of travel. Shiro’s sisters, Alyce and Tey were there, Tey with her husband of three years, Henry. The friends included Sukeo (Skeets) Oji, Shiro’s witness; Ard Kozono, who sang “Oh Promise Me;” Hal Shigeura, Shiz Yoshimura, Tosh Adachi, and Hideko Kawaii. Asako moved into an apartment where Shiro stayed on Wednesdays and weekends. Asako did odd jobs during this honeymoon period, the type of honeymoon that was probably very common in wartime for ages. Even then, this short time together was something they appreciated because in times of war, soldiers and their wives are seldom together and often never see each other again.

After only a little over three months, Shiro received his orders to deploy to the Pacific theater, the Philippines, where he was to work in Manila translating Japanese war documents. On furlough after finishing his training, he and Asako returned quickly to Topaz for a belated wedding reception, then made a brief visit to see his brother Ted, who had taken his family to Idaho. They then returned to St. Paul so Shiro could board a troop train back to California from whence he was to embark by transport to the front. By then the war had moved well past the Philippines, so he was not in any danger, except for the ship’s voyage across the Pacific. Transports were still required to cross the ocean in a zig-zag style to reduce the possibility of being attacked by Japanese submarines. Back home, Asako stayed in St. Paul for a time after moving into a one room apartment.

History shows us that the war ended horribly in the fall of 1945, with the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not long after the Japanese surrendered to the armed forces of the United States of America, Shiro was transferred to Tokyo, Japan. The date was October 22, 1945. Tokyo was a shambles, much of it an urban wasteland created by Allied bombings. He immediately began to try to find his sister, Haru, even as he was assigned the work of interrogating Japanese officials and studying various Japanese war secrets. His successful search is detailed in Chapter 5.

Shiro was assigned to the Army Air Corp Intelligence, A-2. His work included interrogating Japanese war criminals such as the men who had killed downed B-29 pilots in violation of the Geneva Convention; an admiral from whom they were trying to find what might have happened to a missing destroyer; and the Chairman of the Board of Yawata Steel, to find out more about the Japanese steel industry. All of the men who were being questioned were silently taken aback by this Japanese looking young man in the uniform of their recent enemy, asking probing questions in polished Japanese. If they were indignant about this, they never showed it and Shiro was completely unabashed. He was doing his duty.

As Shiro was doing this work and faithfully writing to his wife, Asako was in the process of going back to California along with thousands of other Japanese Americans who were eager to see what they could recover of their property. Asako drove across country with Shiro’s brother-law, Henry Imaoka, her boss, and his brother. She got back to Richmond to be reunited with her family.

How long can a young couple be separated? In this case, it was to be a long 20 months. Asako occupied herself by working in the offices of the Internal Revenue Service in San Francisco, before she got permission to join her husband in Tokyo. She arrived in January of 1947. Their first child, a son and your humble author, Kenneth Alan was born only ten months later on November 2, 1947.

Shiro was actually a civilian, having been discharged by the Army in May of 1946. He was still working under the military government of the occupation forces though, in the Economic and Scientific Section. He found the work fascinating and he enjoyed the chance to work to help the destitute Japanese population recover from the war. During the first Christmas he was there alone, he bought boxes of sandwiches that he passed out to the hungry children of Tokyo on Christmas eve. Even with a wife and son, his salary in the post-war economy of Japan allowed them to lead a high life style. They were able to hire a maid to take care of me, they had nice meals dining out, and were able to afford a very nice apartment. Shiro certainly enjoyed this life style and there was no reason he had for returning to America

Still, I was the first male off-spring of Asako’s parents and she longed for them to be able to see him. With the added pleas of telegrams from her family, Shiro agreed to return to the U. S. A. In July of 1948, the young family boarded the “S.S. Horace Greeley” for long voyage across the Pacific to California, a voyage that Bunda Tokuno had undertaken twice many years before. From a tearful departure in Tokyo harbor they went to a joy filled reunion and greeting in San Francisco. They settled temporarily in Richmond with the Maida family, but shuttled back and forth to Palermo where Shiro helped his family. It was probably difficult to plan for the future because both Asako and Shiro wanted different things. Asako’s father would have wanted Shiro to live with them and learn the nursery business, but Shiro dreamed of owning a farm one day in the central valley.

By 1949 Shiro was convinced he needed to go back to Japan and see if he could seek his fortunes there. He recalled his days in Japan with much fondness and had a solid network of friends and acquaintances who could help him. He would need to be separated from his wife and young son, but it would only be for a while. In May the whole little family traveled east by train to pick up a car and drive it back to California. The idea was to ship the car to Japan and sell it for a sizable profit and give Shiro a stake to earn his fortune, so he returned to Japan with the car to sell, staying there for two years. Asako stayed at her parents’ Richmond house, spending her time taking care of me. It was not long after Shiro left, however, that Asako found herself pregnant with their second child and Shira Lynn was born on March 4, 1950, with her father in Japan.

It must have been a mixed feeling for Asako. Certainly she missed her husband and longed to share her children’s early years with him. Yet, her own family and their friends doted on her young children. The letters from Shiro were not as frequent as they had been in the earlier years, but he still wrote and would, from time to time, send little keepsakes. He returned to his former duties with the military government, but was not as successful in Japan as he had hoped. Soon, practicality forced his hand. The U. S. Government was placing a limit on how long veterans of World War II could take advantage of the educational benefits under the G. I. Bill. He had to decide what to do, so he came back to California, even as his father had done 50 years before. In August of 1951, he entered the graduate program in Agricultural Economics at UC Berkeley.

The G. I. Bill was pretty good for the Shiro Tokuno family, because in October of 1951, after a short stay in UC’s married student housing in Albany, they were able to buy a house under the G. I. Bill. The house was in El Sobrante, a sleepy little suburb in the East Bay Area region just north of Richmond. It was not far from the University. Asako found this ideal for it was close to her girl-hood home. Shiro was still gone a lot, though, hauling oranges from the central valley to the bay area to provide some income and studying late nights to earn his Master’s degree. He also worked part-time for a bank and other odd jobs. A third child, Anthony Theodore (who, as his cousin Tim, was named after his two uncles), was born on July 10, 1952.

Shiro finished his degree in 1953 and with three children, needed to find a full time job as soon as he could. He worked briefly for Marianni, Inc., a fruit packaging company in San Jose. He then spent a short time working for the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, but soon found a better position in the federal government with the Bureau of Land Management. Unfortunately, it meant that they would have to move to southern California, far from both of their families. In the summer of 1955, when I was 7, Shira 5, and Tony only just turned 3, they packed all their belongings and moved to Buena Park. This was another small suburb, this time in Orange County, not far from another non-descript town called Anaheim. In those days, there was a lot of open space there. Behind the new house was a sugar beet farm and just up the road a large dairy. Houses were being built and people moving into this area at a startling rate as the United States’ economy continued its post-war prosperity. By 1956, the Shiro Tokuno family was also prospering and celebrated by having a fourth child, Riki Maida, on October 16, 1956. Sadly, it was not long after this date that they got word of the death of Shiro’s mother.

Maybe it was his mother’s passing that spurred Shiro to change his career. At least he moved closer to where his earlier dreams had told him he wanted to go: to Sacramento. He found a job with the State of California’s Department of Water Resources, so in March of 1958 the slightly larger family once again packed up all their belongings and moved back north to West Sacramento, where Shiro has bought his third house.

By this time, the family had a feeling of being “complete” and settled in some sense, but the last change was yet to come. In 1960, Shiro purchased a little over 40 acres of land north of Sacramento in the Natomas district. He intended to build his dream house there and move into it as soon as he could. Blueprints were drawn, contractors hired, and the earth was moved. By December of 1961, roughly six months behind schedule, the family moved in. It was to be the last family home. The rest were all sold to pay for this farm. Shiro also bought tractors and other farm equipment, raised a shed to shelter the equipment and tools, and planted various crops, starting with cucumbers, then watermelons as seed crops. When these proved too non-profitable he turned to sorghum, wheat, and safflower. He also farmed 20 acres of prune trees to the north in Sutter county, a venture supported by his three sisters.

These farms provided his sons with an opportunity to work the land, learn to be resourceful and discover the rewards of hard work. They also provided the family with a fifth child, Merijune, who was born on October 27, 1962, almost exactly 15 years after her oldest brother. The family was now both complete and fully settled. It had wandered through large part of California to get there, but Shiro’s clan had finally come home.

Shiro retired from the State in 1983, but like his older brothers never retired from farming. He also retired from the Army Reserve as a lieutenant colonel and served his community by being on the Natomas School Board, presiding for two terms. He has been very active in veterans’ affairs, letting the world know of the contributions of Japanese Americans to the victories in both Europe and the Pacific in World War II.

Shiro and Asako now have nine grandchildren. I live in Hawai`i with my wife, Diane, and twin daughters Jamie and Chelsea.  I work for the University of Hawaii. Shira is a professor of electrical engineering at Washington State University, living in Pullman with her husband, John. They have two children, Miya and Henry. She received her Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington. Tony is also an electrical engineer, having both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Engineering from the University of California at Davis. He worked in the trade in Silicon Valley. He and his wife since 1975, Norma, live there with three sons, Mathew, Zachary, and Nathan. Riki has his home in Bellevue, Washington. He met his wife, Darla, before any of his siblings met their spouses and married her in 1984. They have a daughter, Deven, and a son, Nikolas. Merijune lives close to her parents in Sacramento. She got her Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Arts from the California State University at Chico. She is employed by the State of California Department of Health.