Dear Readers, 

This story laid in my heart for four years. I met Jim Yoshihara when I first arrived in Colorado. I am a natural questioner – even when I’m not in writing mode. I am sure I probably bombarded Jim, known as Yoshi, with lots of questions about his family ancestry. It was with genuine interest that I started the conversation, but quickly I realized I was hearing a unique story. I never forgot the details he told me about what had happened to his family. It is with great pleasure that I now introduce you, Readers, to this man who I admire greatly for his calm presence and his demeanor when facing trials.

Yoshi, now 80, lived a life complicated by politics, war, and people struggling to understand what is different to what they find familiar. It teeters on fear of the unknown and shines in resiliency of people facing difficult challenges. It shows the backwash of pain that comes when flooded with circumstances that reach beyond our control. So often, it is the little ones who suffer the consequences of decisions made in board rooms far from the playgrounds of our youth.

Yoshi’s story begins in Japan and California. Yoshi’s father, Yasaturo was born in Japan. He did not have money for travel but he was determined to get to the United States. As a ship left Japan, Yasaturo hid on the cargo ship as a stow-away. When the ship arrived near the coast of Washington state, Yasaturo swam several miles to get to the beach of America.  He was 18 years old. 

Yoshi’s mom, Kumiko was born in Los Angeles, California. She was raised by a grandmother who took Kumiko to live in Japan when she was just a baby. Thirteen years later, Kumiko returned to America, now a young teenager, and she was assigned to the first grade because she did not know the English language. 

A few years later, Yasaturo and Kumiko met in Los Angeles through mutual friends. Yasaturo knew he wanted to marry Kumiko and told her family he would wait for her to be of marrying age. 

When time passed and culture permitted, the young couple married. They became naturalized citizens of the United States. The family settled in Venice, California where the first three of their five children were born. The couple had three boys and two girls. Yoshi was the second son. He was born in 1939 – two years before the outbreak of World War II. The family became vegetable farmers. 

The year Yoshi was born, Hitler ominously began his invasion into other countries starting with his footprint in Poland. Japan was one of Germany’s allies. Great Britain, France and Poland quickly fought back to halt the growing rise of Germany’s power. This war grew to be one of the deadliest battles with more than 80 million people killed in the fighting and surrounding events.

President Franklin Roosevelt restrained our troops from entering the war for two years. Then on December 7, 1941, for the first time in our history, one of our states was bombed by another country. As people awoke on a Sunday morning, Japan attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. The next day, in a speech to Congress, Roosevelt famously described the day before as “a date which will live in infamy”. Within an hour, Congress passed a motion declaring war on Germany, and the United States joined forces with its other allies. 

When Japan’s air patrol attacked Hawaii, many United States citizens began to fear and outwardly express their anger against American citizens with an Asian ancestry. Fear and prejudices resulted in a growing racial divide. In response, five months after Pearl Harbor’s demise, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law Executive Order 9066. This approved the removal and the imprisonment of close to 120,000 American citizens with Japanese ethnicity from our western coastlands.  

When this happened, Yoshi’s family was given a two-week notice that they were going to be incarcerated and moved from their home. They had to leave everything behind except what they could each carry in one suitcase. Two weeks later, Yoshi’s father, mother, grandfather, two siblings and Yoshi were loaded on a bus and driven to the Santa Anita Racetrack in Arcadia, California. They were incarcerated with 8500 other American citizens of Japanese ancestry. Each family lived in one horse stall. Yoshi remembers his six-member family’s crowded conditions. “I remember the horse stall. The bedding was straw in bags.” He was three-years-old. The family lived there until camp bases could be built to house these American citizens. 

 

Ten camps were erected throughout the regions of California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arkansas. Six months after life in the horse stall, Yoshi’s family was moved to the Granada War Relocation Center. “I remember we were released from there [Santa Anita], put on a train, and sent to Colorado”, Yoshi said.  The new housing was located in southeast Colorado, close to the town of Granada.  To delineate between the camp and the town, the Granada War Relocation Center was given its nickname, Camp Amache, named after a Cheyenne chief’s daughter. 

This camp housed over 7300 people. Yoshi remembers the “homes” were long barracks. He said each family had one 10 x 12 room; it was tar-papered – “they never were completed”, Yoshi said. The room housed a pot belly stove and Army cots for beds. There was no running water. Many families used a communal bathhouse. Yoshi remembers that the families were assigned shifts as to when to use the bathrooms.

Food was of great concerned among those living in Camp Amache . “My father conned his way into becoming the head chef at the mess hall and assigned his father – my grandfather – as his assistant”, Yoshi said. This allowed the family to be issued a red Chevy flatbed truck and Yoshi’s father and grandfather were given special permission to travel to Denver to pick up food supplies. Yoshi’s father carried water from a water tank to use when preparing food in the mess hall. 

Reflecting on that time, Yoshi said, “it amazing how the Japanese people made the best of the situation”. The families created a school so the children could continue their education; teachers imprisoned in the camp took the role as classroom instructors. Many families created small gardens in front of their barracks to grow vegetables to help feed their families. Some people were given permission to work on a nearby farm, and it became a source of food for everyone in Camp Amache.

Yoshi said that he remembers “Colorado’s Governor Carr was sympathetic and empathic to the Japanese housed in his state. The Japanese people living in Camp Amache were not treated with hostility compared to some other camps.  The Japanese people trusted Governor Carr”, Yoshi said. In a statement quoted in the Denver Post, Governor Carr said, “If you harm them, you must first harm me”. The Governor explained, “This is a difficult time for all Japanese-speaking people. We must work together for the preservation of our American system and the continuation of our theory of universal brotherhood . . . If we do not extend humanity’s kindness and understanding to [the Japanese-Americans], if we deny them the protection of the Bill of Rights, if we say that they must be denied the privilege of living in any of the 48 states without hearing or charge of misconduct, then we are tearing down the whole American system”. When I asked Yoshi how he felt about that time in the camp, he said, “The Japanese culture doesn’t talk about emotions. It is what it is”.  

When Yoshi was five years old the war ended and “we were told you are free to go”, he said. He remembers that there was not a plan for how families were to relocate. Everything they had owned was taken from them when they were ordered from their coastal homes two years earlier. Yoshi’s family climbed in the truck and drove away. For a lot of families, particularly older people, there was no reason to go back to the coastal areas so other Japanese families took in the elderly ones left behind. “That part was really sad. They had nowhere to go”, said Yoshi. 

Now out of the camp, it took a year for Yoshi’s family to find a new home. First they moved to Adams City, then Brighton, and then to Longmont where they settled. The family once again became farmers and worked with the Kanemoto family, who were large land owners in Longmont. They farmed for three years. Each of those years, right at harvest time hail damaged the crops. Yoshi said, “so my father decided he had enough of that”. His father found a dilapidated greenhouse in Lafayette, Colorado and the family created a fruit stand and flower shop. They were the first florists in Lafayette and are still there today, now run by Yoshi’s nieces.

Yoshi attended grade school in Lafayette. “Communication was not the best because of the language differences”, he said. Yoshi and his siblings were the only Japanese children in the school. He was constantly bullied because of his Japanese ancestry. “It seems I was fighting through all my grade school years”. In school, the Mexican and Japanese were made to sit in the back of the class, Yoshi remembered.

By high school years, he and his siblings were more accepted by his peers. He became friends with Maryann who was a girl one grade behind him. When she became a senior and he was one year out of school, they started dating.  “It was astonishing to me because she was one of the most popular girls in school. She was English and German. I couldn’t imagine her being interested in me. I was an introvert – still am. She was outgoing”

Lafayette was a small town and as is typical nationwide – in a small town, “everyone knows your business”, Yoshi said. The couple faced a lot of prejudices against their dating from both sides of their families, as well as the townspeople. “We vowed we would be together so we had to endure the angry people,” Yoshi said. 

Yoshi and Maryann dated for six years. During those years, Maryann went to college studying to become a registered nurse (R.N.). Yoshi enlisted in the Army to serve a three-year term. He was first stationed in Fort Hood Army base in Texas. When he had leave-time, he would travel back to Colorado to visit Maryann. This was in the late 50s and early 60s. “It was horrible”, Yoshi said. He would travel by bus and the stops along the way were clearly marked with “whites only” and “colored only” signs.  The experience helped Yoshi understand the “persecution of others because of their color. It introduced me to the plight of other races”, he said. Yoshi, who has very light skin used the “colored only” facilities because “I was a minority and there I was more welcomed. It’s strange because you don’t know where to go.”

Eventually, in his Army career, Yoshi was stationed for two years in Germany to patrol the east/west border. Then he was assigned to Nuremberg, Germany, in the southern half of the country. He returned to the United States at the end of his three-year Army commitment. Yet, once again world politics superseded Yoshi’s plans. 

President Kennedy had discovered that the Soviet Union had built missile sites in Cuba. There was growing fear that, if this turned for the worse, there could be a nuclear war. As the world powers found a resolution, the Army wanted to keep its forces ready for action. Yoshi’s service time was extended another six months. 

After the Cuban Missile crisis, in 1962, Yoshi completed his years of United States Army service. He arrived back home in Colorado. Maryann had graduated from college – now an R.N. After their long wait, the couple married. Then, it was Yoshi’s turn to go to college. He attended and graduated from Colorado State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Art. They moved to Dallas, Texas where Yoshi did design work for a lumber company and later for an advertising company.

Then in the late 60s, Yoshi and Maryann moved back to Lafayette so that Yoshi could work in the family floral business. At one point, Yoshi’s father came to him to tell him he had to “go his own way”. This was a common practice “being the second son” in a Japanese family. That is what happens”, Yoshi said. So in 1976, Yoshi and Maryann moved to Boulder, Colorado and opened Artist Three LTD Flowers by Yoshihara. He ran the flower shop for the next 30 years.

Yoshi retired from the floral business in 2006. “It is not in my nature to do nothing” he said. So, now, with time to fill, he started working as a Via bus driver in 2008. Via – a customer-focused transportation service – has at its core mission to “promote independence and self-sufficiency for people with limited mobility”. The company serves everyone eligible “regardless of age, health, disability, income or ethnicity”. I personally use Via’s bus service and it has certainly created in my life the vision Via has for all. Their mobility options enhance the “independence and quality of life” for its customers. For Yoshi, it was a perfect fit. Yoshi said the job with Via was an ideal position for him because what he missed most and enjoyed in the floral business was working with the customers. He has now been with Via for the past eleven years. 

A great sadness in Yoshi’s life was when, at age 71, Maryann developed sepsis from a bowel obstruction; she passed away in 2011. “I loved her very much. She is missed,” Yoshi said. During their marriage, Yoshi and Maryann had two daughters: Jo-Lynn and Machal.  Both graduated from college and work in their respective professions. Jo-Lynn is a social worker for the Boulder Valley School District.  Machal is an accountant and Director of Talent Recruitment for seven veterinary clinics along the Front Range.  Fortunately for Yoshi, both families live in Boulder and have four grandchildren between them. “I get to see them [grandchildren] all the time,” he says with a smile. Besides being a grandpa and working his hours as a Via bus driver, Yoshi also is a beekeeper, gardener and artist.

Yoshi calls these years the “winter season of his life”. In looking back over his time on earth, I asked him about his feeling concerning the prejudices he encountered. “In all those years, it is difficult being different”, he said. 

Having this platform for telling his story, Yoshi asked me if he could show honor to some individuals. “I want to recognize the people important in my life – my kids, Via and other coworkers over the years – for their encouragement and support to me.” Lisa Bitzer, Via’s Director of Paratransit & Mobility Services told me a lovely story about Yoshi’s humble kind spirit. For Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving and his own birthday, Yoshi celebrates by baking pies for the Via Call Center. Now let me tell you why this act of kindness is such an encouragement to these employees. The call center budget was cut by three employees leaving fewer people to answer the phones. They work 40 hours a week to answer over 2300 calls weekly. So, you can imagine the delight when Yoshi walks in with one of his specialty pies: key lime, blueberry, chocolate mouse or apple! It is a moment of joy in a very stressful job. 

I’d like to add one more thing about Via. Yoshi is a Via Paratransit driver. Via has another forty-eight drivers and they provide approximately 7000 – 8000 trips a month. The volume of requests continues to rise for transportation for individuals who are aging or disabled in our communities. Lisa Bitzer says, “we have to put approximately 250-300 trips per week on the waitlist and many of those do not get a ride with Via. That’s 125-150 riders that are affected by budget cuts.” That means hundreds of individuals do not have a ride to a doctor, grocery store, family event or social connection in their town. Sadly for many, there is a gap in what is required versus what is available. 

To help address that need, Via has intensified its outreach for volunteer drivers. Currently, there are 27 Via Volunteer Drivers who offer their time to help drive seniors and those with disabilities to their appointments. These drivers meet the need of between 550-600 trips per month. They help to decrease the number of individuals who would otherwise be on the waitlist. This is a fantastic service that helps strengthen our community. Lisa said Via would like to increase the number of volunteer drivers to ten more by the end of 2020. “That would compensate for the budget cut losses,” she said.  Readers, you may visit Via’s website www.viacolorado.org  or contact Lisa Bitzer directly at 303-473-2885 for more information about how to become a volunteer driver. Selfishly, I hope many of you are prompted by this need. 

For those who follow the Drop In With Debbie blog, you know that throughout the story, I prompt you with questions to ask yourselves. I saved the questions until the end this time, so now, Readers…here goes. Has world politics affected your life? Have you struggled throughout your life with a personal situation? How did you build resiliency in your life? With all that Jim Yoshihara experienced in childhood, as an American citizen, he willingly enlisted and served his country. He is now one of our veterans. Have you, Reader, had to “turn your cheek” on a situation and choose a path to serve those who at one time hurt you?  Yoshi’s humble spirit shows in his desire to honor and befriend those close to him over the years. Who would you honor? What is a question you wish you could have asked Yoshi?

Last month’s blog introduced you to Gail Lewis who was a woman on a mission to track her ancestors’ stories. Likewise, she taught others “how-to” tips on finding their own family history. Nette from Longmont sums up what many of you were saying in your responses: “You sure caught my heart with this latest blog.  My deep desire is to know who I am. It is almost like you sent an angel, with more stops on this ancestry road map. THANK YOU.  I think it is time to join the Longmont Genealogy Society.”

Beth from Pennsylvania says: “It sounds like Gail and her husband have had an exciting life of travel! I love reading these articles!”

Readers, we will end with the sentiments from Linda in Florida, who says, “Another fascinating blog!!  You come in contact with the most interesting people!” 

I think each one of us has a story and it is always a delight for me to meet such interesting and inspiring seniors. When I was a young pup, I never imagined the wisdom and joy that the over 55+ generation might have to offer me. I was in that “know-it-all” stage where someone “old” couldn’t possibly understand what I was going through in my “oh so dramatic” life. As I interview the ladies and gentleman, who tell their stories for this blog, I am touched by the level of emotions they have taken in their life. Over the fifteen months that we have heard others talk about their lives, we traveled with them as they told of their love, grief, laughter, deep heartache and loss, struggles that could break the core of a person, triumphant victories and determination to choose a different path. I have been inspired and challenged to be “my better self” with each individual that I’ve met. I hope that as we go into this new year, you too will find delight and inspiration from the many people you will meet in the 2020 blogs. 

 

Until next month, may peace be at your side,

Debbie Noel

We have several ways to interact with Debbie!

• Email her at DroppingInWithDebbie@gmail.com

• Register at the blog site (very bottom of the page) to have your comments viewed online

• Send your letters to:

Debbie Noel
C/o Longmont Senior Center
910 Longs Peak Avenue
Longmont, Colorado 80501

For more information about Via Mobility Service go to their website: www.viacolorado.org

You may also contact Lisa Bitzer at 303-473-2885 if you would like to see how you may be able to support Via as a volunteer or employee. 

If you wish to make a donation to Via, contact Lisa Curtis by calling the Via headquarters at: 303-447-2848