Sam Kitaguchi Passes

Museum Date Set

Now it’s for sure. Our program on Vanished: Lompoc’s Japanese at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) will take place on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 2 p.m. It was set up today.

Response to our e-mails indicated overwhelming support for June 18 over other available dates. Not only will lots of one-time Lompoc residents and their children and grandchildren be present, but so will Dr. Kent Haldan, the Diablo Valley College instructor whose research formed the basis for the book, and also Dr. Art Hansen, the retired Cal State Fullerton history and Asian Studies professor whose wonderful review of the book (“narrative force, organizational clarity, innovative research and intellectual penetration”) gave it credibility for museums, libraries and bookstores all over the state.

It’s now available at the JANM gift shop and M&S Pharmacy in Los Angeles as well as book stores in Lompoc, Solvang, and Santa Barbara. We’ve also had contact from Sacramento State, the California Museum in Sacramento, and Manzanar National Historic Site, as well as numerous calls from the Central Coast.

Most recently, last Friday, George Toshio Johnston published a review of Vanished in the Los Angeles Rafu Shimpo.  He gave Vanished an amazing 19 inches of space including a photo of the book’s cover. Thank you George, and thank you Lucille Honda for putting us in touch.  

The second printing of the book has arrived and is now available. We’ve changed the description of the cover, we’ve corrected the spelling of ofuro and of Aki Iwata’s name, and we added Dr. Hansen’s praise and page numbers for the photo pages.

Speaking of the cover, as many of you know, the photograph by Todoroki Hozaki was not taken in Lompoc, despite what the author wrote. Thanks to Tets Furukawa we’ve found that the parade took place in Guadalupe. And it was not a Fourth of July parade. It was a procession staged to celebrate the donation of the altar to the Guadalupe Buddhist Temple. It took place not in July but in October of 1933. But the biggest surprise came from George Yoshitake. It turns out that the donor of the altar was his wife June’s grandfather! Small world.

One bit of sad news--Satoru "Sam" Kitaguchi passed away the evening before Thanksgiving in Phoenix. The fourth of six children born in the US to Gitaro and Ume Kitaguchi, Sam grew up on the family asparagus farm near La Purisima Mission. He later became an engineer and was awarded a commendation by NASA for his work on space vehicles. In retirement he provided lengthy family histories for the book Vanished. Sam had recently graduated high school at Gila River when he accompanied his father back home to Lompoc in 1945 to inspect the vandalized family home. Sam absolved the Rivaldi family, neighbors to the Kitaguchis, for any responsiblity. The Rivaldis farmed the Kitaguchi land during the war. "We have no quarrel with the Rivaldi's," Sam declared. "They did an excellent job. We were very grateful." On a lighter note the episode in which Sam was clobbered with a baseball bat by Akira Francis Nishimura at Japanese School in Lompoc became a reference point in the book. "I thought I killed the guy," said Nishimura years later. Nishimura predeceased Kitaguchi by less than a year.  Kitaguchi leaves a sister, Satsuko, and two brothers, Chitose and Tome as well as his immediate family. A memorial service will be conducted soon by Phoenix Memorial Park.