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Serving As Your Voice of the Nikkei Community Since 1902
Vol. 63, Issue 23 / May 28, 2008
Long Journey Home
By David K. Yamaguchi
The North American Post
Anne Iwata and husband Darren Stucker (Madison, Wisconsin)
 | AT LAST, the "Long Journey Home" graduation weekend is behind us, and we can relax and think quietly about it, away from its blur of activity at Blaine Methodist and on the University of Washington campus. What did it mean?
FOR THE HONORED GRADUATES, I believe it was a chance to say to the world in a big way that the World War II experiences of the Nisei were had by real, breathing, living people, many of whom are still with us. The media coverage of the event was impressive and international. I know this in part because I received an e-mail from a college friend in Tokyo, asking if I knew a Dr. Ruby Inouye, who had been interviewed on National Public Radio.
FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, it was a chance to correct an oversight, and to prove that the highest levels of its administration stand behind the honorary degrees they were giving out. The president and regents of the university-outstanding citizens of the state who must give the go-ahead before anything can happen on campus-don't get together on a Sunday in all their regalia for nothing.
FOR VISITING FAMILY from as far away as New York City (Kim Araki), it was a chance to learn more about and briefly join the community that a parent came from. It was a chance to reflect on how they, the children of the Japanese-American wartime diaspora, might have been different, had they grown up here.
FOR MY DAD, among the degree-recipients, it was an exceptional weekend when he could again see many former classmates, some of whom he hadn't seen for 60 years. A man of few words, I could tell he was excited because he had his shirt and tie on for the afternoon convocation at 9:30 in the morning. Walking into the UW's Kane Hall, Dad would remark "Ozei da ne!" [What a crowd!] in the Japanese speech that he lapses into of late.
Normally Dad's life is a much smaller routine now. His slave-driver son wants him to get out of his chair to sweep up the grass clippings on the sidewalk. It is time to take his medicine. The cat wants in. The cat wants out.
Tomiko Yamamoto, Tama and Wendy Tokuda.
 | FOR ME, the weekend was a chance to realize the myriad ways in which those long-ago UW students have positively influenced my life. Shig Tanagi, longtime friend of my parents, was among the degree-recipients present. The funniest story I can remember about Mr. Tanagi is the time he took my brother and I fishing as boys. Mr. Tanagi walked out onto a log to retrieve Gary's snagged lure, which we could see. While we didn't catch any fish that day, we came home with a tale that makes us laugh to this day-that of Mr. Tanagi falling in and getting so drenched that water was running from his shoes.
Tama Tokuda, who sat behind the Suzzallo Library information desk when I was a UW student, was also in attendance, this time with all four kids in tow, including daughters Wendy and Marilyn. The Tokuda girls were the babysitters three blocks away who my parents called now and then.
The late Dr. Ben Uyeno took care of my Auntie Margy [Margaret Arase] during her final illness. When he dropped by her hospital room, they talked as old friends instead of as doctor and patient. There are many other similar connectionsc
The weekend was also an opportunity to say hello again, and thank you, to Denver Nisei who had helped me feel at home across the six years I lived in Boulder, Colorado, 40 minutes up the interstate from the Mile-High City. Denver has a small JA community today because as the Nisei were riding trains east with their parents during WWII, the signs in one station after another had said, "No Japs!" But at Denver, the signs had said, "Japanese Welcome." And so the families had disembarked to start life anew.
Alice Yamamoto and Tomi Mano.
 | Chiyo [Nakata] Horiuchi and her husband, former Seattleite Bob Horiuchi, were among the Nisei who invited me to their homes and shared something of their lives. Bob attended the University of Denver with Dad. The Horiuchis would go on to do post-retirement work in Africa.
"I am proud and glad to have been able to cross paths in life with you," I was able to say to Ms. Horiuchi as I passed her in the UW throng. I wonder if we will ever meet again.
Alice Yamamoto is a Denver Nisei who had looked out for me even more. I enjoyed many dinners in her family's home, as if I was her nephew. Only over the "Long Journey" weekend did I finally grasp why-she and her sister, Tomi Mano, had lived behind my mom's Arase childhood home on King Street-the girls had cut through the houses when en-route to Collins Playfield.
Moreover, the weekend was a time to learn, with humility, how hard it had been financially for the Nisei to stay in school. According to Prof. Gail Nomura, it was the rare Nisei who could afford to attend the UW continuously. Especially the male students tended to be older, as they would drop in and out, to study and work in turn as they could.
Kenji Okuda
 | Perhaps best, I found the weekend a chance to see what it is possible to be in my late 80s. Like many adult sons, I probably cannot truly see my father, as the big picture of his life is obscured by my henpecking of his daily existence-"Dad, did you take a bath? Are those clothes clean? Do you have your house key?" But the other Nisei men I can see clearly, aided by some personal distance and objectivity. Kenji Okuda is seemingly as intelligent and sharp-thinking as the day that he and Dad conferred in Suzzallo on December 8, 1941, about the arrests of their fathers the previous day, and what they might be able to do about it.
AT THE CLOSE of the graduation day's events, I was embarrassed-as a UW alumnus-to lose my car in the underground parking lot there. In my occasionally absent-minded way, I had neglected to note which floor I had parked on in the all-too-familiar lot-to the amusement of always "with-it" Sheldon Arakaki. But my subterranean wandering with Dad turned out to be worth it, for it delayed our departure so that we saw Steve Sakahara help an elderly Nisei lady, who had apparently become separated from her party, to their van, which the two spotted at the lot entrance.
Steve's good deed brought to mind the just-right words that he had said on behalf of the Sakahara clan at the close of his Uncle Toru's memorial service two days before. The elder Sakahara had been among the bilingual older Nisei who had labored alongside my Yamaguchi grandfather in taking care of the affairs of the Seattle JA village.
These days the ethnic village where the WWII UW Nisei grew up is becoming a village of the past, a village of the mind and heart. Yet in watching a gentleman like Steve, it occurred to me-as I pulled out of the lot and made the left down 15th to take the slow route home-that perhaps the village will be all right for at least a little while longer.
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