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Serving As Your Voice of the Nikkei Community Since 1902
Vol. 63, Issue 19 / April 30, 2008
After 100 years: Tracking father's roots
By Shihou Sasaki
The North American Post
Yoshitaka family in front of Seattle Japanese Language School.
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In 1907, Masakichi Yoshitaka, then 16, reached Seattle after a 75-day trip from Kagawa, Japan, to rely on his elder brother Hatsuji, who worked for a local carpet business in Seattle.
In 2007, his oldest daughter Fudeko Sagara watched Ken Naoko's documentary program aired in Japan and saw one image of the Kokugo Gakko, a former Seattle Japanese Language School, which looked similar to the photo previously shown by her father.
The 100-year gap was filled out last Friday with a visit of Yoshitaka's daughters, sons and other family members to the Seattle Japanese Language School. Though the language school location is different from that of around 1907, the desk and chair exhibited in the Northwest Nikkei Museum in the language school were special and spiritual for the visitors.
"I am very emotional [to be here]," the 75-year-old Sagara said in Japanese. "This reminds me of my father's story."
Yoshitaka attended the Kokugo Gakko or some other school program to study English for about two years while working for a carpet business with brother Hatsuji. Yoshtiaka, later, moved to Kennecott, Ala., for a mine business and returned to Japan in 1925. But the relationship between the family and Seattle did not end.
When Yukiharu Yoshitaka, a relative-judo competitor, visited Seattle to participate in the 1990 Goodwill Games as a Japanese national team member, local judo community members supported the Japanese teams. He won the 71 kg division in the tournament.
"I am very grad that they visited our language school," said Tsuchino Forrester, vice president of Japanese Community Service in Seattle. "It was such a coincidence to have a new relationship."
To show gratitude to the language school management, the visitors from Hokkaido donated one million yen (about $10,000) to the language school operation.
"This is our appreciation for the language school taking care of my father in Seattle," Sagara said. "And our family might come and attend the community."
Fudeko Sagara, center, sits in an old language school desk at the Northwest Nikkei Museum and shares her father's stories with the Seattle Japanese Language School board member Masaru Tahara, left.
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Toru Sakahara serves community for lifetime: 1916 - 2008
By Shihou Sasaki
The North American Post
Toru Sakahara
 | Toru Sakahara, an early-time Japanese American (Nikkei) attorney, passed away last Saturday at age 91. A memorial service will be held at 2 pm on May 16 at Blaine Memorial United Methodist Church in Seattle. Remembrances may be made in care of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington.
Born in Tacoma, Wash., in 1916 and raised in a Japanese farming family in Fife, Sakahara had served as a lifelong civil rights advocate after the war in addition to a private law practice. In 1966, he helped repeal the Alien Land Laws of Washington, which had banned land ownership by Asian immigrants since 1921.
Earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in 1940, Sakahara then became one of the early Nikkei law school students in addition to being a leader of the Japanese Students Club and debate team. In 1942, in his third year of the six-year-law school program at the University of Washington, he dropped out of the classes just after the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor. He was later sent to Minidoka camp with his wife Kiyo.
Both of them will be University of Washington Honorary Baccalaureate Degree "Nunc-pro-Tunc (now for then)" recipients with other over 400 other Nikkei whose college lives were interrupted during World War II.
The First Japanese American Teacher in Seattle Schools Dies
Claire Suguro 1919-2008
By Yaeko Inaba
The North American Post
Claire Suguro at her house in April, 2007
Photo by Yaeko Inaba / The North American Post
 | The Japanese American educator and pioneer, Claire Suguro died at age 88 on Friday, April 18. Suguro became the first Japanese American teacher in the Seattle School district in 1950.
Born in 1919, as a daughter of Issei parents from Shizuoka, Suguro went to Japan with a Christian mission group sponsored by the Japanese Baptist Church in 1940. Since she was a devout Catholic and liked staying in Tokyo, she studied at Sacred Heart (Seishin) school until World War II began.
Once the war broke, the school's English nuns returned their home country. But Suguro remained and worked as an English teacher and school manager. She worked at Allied GHQ (headquarters) in postwar days, too.
Coming back to the U.S. in 1946, Suguro went to Seattle University and four years later, She was hired as one of the first two teachers of Asian descent.the for the Seattle School District. Suguro taught first grade at Bailey Gatzert Elementary school. Ron Mamiya and Scott Oki, well known leaders in the Nikkei community, were among her students during this era and she also taught English to Isseis at night school for their naturalization exams for citizenship.
Later Suguro taught at Ingraham High School in North Seattle where she was also school counselor. Miyoko Kaneta, who also taught at Ingraham, remembered how hard Suguro worked every day. Though Suguro retired in 1993, she didn't quit teaching. She was at Franklin and Garfield High Schools to teach Japanese and a board member of the College Planning Network. "Because I like kids. I am still hearing from them," said Suguro in 2007.
A memorial service for Claire Suguro is scheduled for 2 pm May 8 in the Chapel of St. Ignatius on the Seattle University campus.
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