Lompoc Girl Known by Nikkei Nickname

Two notes from the end of January:

A story of Toshi Inouye of Lompoc's Hinode Store came to light this week. Joey Galindo of Lompoc told it. It illustrated the warm relationship between Toshi and the Hispanic community. “My cousin Rosemary was always called Tochi,” Galindo said. “It was because Toshi ran the store. We changed it from Toshi to Tochi.”

Nearly 300 people attended the two memorial services for June Yoshitake last week. There were more than 200 in Lompoc and nearly 100 in Montebello.

June Yoshitake Passes

June Asako Yoshitake passed away Friday night. She was the wife and partner of George Yoshitake of Lompoc. She was 76. The two had been married for 53 years. It was George who first suggested that the topic of the Nikkei community in Lompoc be examined. He then helped research Vanished: Lompoc’s Japanese, and to publicize it.  

June’s memorial service today in Montebello confirmed what we all knew: June was gracious and stylish yet unpretentious, a “tidiness freak” as her brother Harvey said, but a caring one. She had a gift in her ability to connect with people.

June was born in Kingsburg, CA in 1934. She grew up in Dinuba, the second of four children of Harvey and Akiko Iwata. Her father was a semi-pro baseball player and farmer. June’s softball skills would later make him proud.

The family was incarcerated at Poston in 1942. June was seven. Their next stop was Cleveland, then when the war ended, Arlington, Virginia, where June graduated high school. She had wanted to become a flight attendant, but she was rejected for being too short. She went to work at a credit company, but found it stressful. She did not like turning down applicants, said her sister Shirley.

June met George at a JACL dance in 1955.  They married in 1957 and moved to California. They moved north from Montebello to Lompoc in 1966.

June gave birth to three children: Steve, Dawn and Glen. She worked as a teacher’s aide in Special Education for fifteen years. Next to her family, her church, Valley of the Flowers United Church of Christ in Lompoc, was her top priority. She also volunteered for years with Lompoc Hospice.  

George went to the podium during today’s service to speak of June. He mentioned her unconditional love and her total support for him.

Nobody ever disliked June. As one of her church friends said, “She was a wonderful woman.”

June also had a second connection to our book. The cover photo is of a parade celebrating donation of an altar to the Buddhist Temple in Guadalupe in 1933. The donor was June's grandfather.

Lucille and Kaoru Honda Spot a Familiar Name

Last week we published a newly-discovered listing of the Issei workers at Burpee Seed Company. Lucille and Kaoru Bill Honda read it and saw a name they knew, Tsumesaburo Hayashi.

“I read the interesting news from the Lompoc Valley Historical Society. Bill and I were  surprised to read his  parents names on the list of the earliest-hired people at the Burpee Seed Company in 1927. WOW!  Also, their friend, Tsumesaburo Hayashi's name was listed. It was a real coincidence that last Friday Bill's brother, Mas' widow, Jane,  and her daughter Patti and son-in-law Ken happened to be visiting us here in Santa Barbara from Culver City and we were discussing  Lompoc 's  old timers of Japanese ancestry.  Patti even mentioned that she and her dad  (Mas) flew to Salt Lake City to attend Mr. Hayashi's funeral many years ago. Mr. Hayashi came to Keetley, Utah, together with the Japanese who relocated there, and after the war he moved o Salt Lake City and periodically came to visit us.

"So, thanks for the informative information about Senmatsu, Sumi and Mr. Hayashi.   To hear that the California State Museum is now housing your "Vanished" book is terrific.  Great news. We are so happy that you have your "Vanished" website in order to keep everyone informed.  Thank You!” -Lucille Y. Honda

Mr. Hayashi appears in Vanished on page 97 but his first name is listed as it was in other sources as Tsunejiro. Lucille also described Mr. Hayashi's humble personality. “He was a bachelor and a very quiet person. I remember when he sometimes came to visit us at our home in Salt Lake City. He was a man of very few words. Bill and his siblings knew Mr. Hayashi ever since they were tiny tykes.  As is the Japanese custom, he always brought goodies when he visited us.”

Thank you Lucille and Bill.

State Museum Orders Vanished; New Burpee Info

Good news on the distribution front: the California State Museum has ordered a shipment of Vanished.

Besides being a well-respected and frequently-visited museum, the California State Museum is the first institution in Northern California to stock the book. Now those interested can pick up a copy right off the shelf instead of resorting to e-mail. 

The museum is currently staging an exhibit on Japanese-American history, so the book fits in appropriately.

Other interesting news comes from the Lompoc Valley Historical Society. A list of Issei employees at the Burpee Seed Company in 1941 has turned up in the LVHS files. The list includes seventeen names including surnames Morimi, Muranaka, Yamamoto, Okabe, Kan, Marui, Ishijima, Ishizaka, Murashige, Tsuyuki, Takahashi, Sakanashi, Hayashi and Honda.

The earliest hired were employed in March of 1927. That included Tsumesaburo Hayashi and Senmatsu and Sumi Honda, parents of Kaoru Bill Honda who plays a role in our book.

Kenzo Sakanashi, the longtime Burpee foreman, was hired in April of 1928.

Nichi Bei Review

Nichi Bei Review

“Important and untold” writes Professor Wayne Maeda of Sacramento State in the most recent review of Vanished to appear in the media.  It may be read in its entirety in the Nichi Bei Weekly published in San Francisco. And, soon, here.

“Vanished is a wonderful read, highly accessible, and adds another important chapter to the history of the Japanese in America," writes Dr. Maeda. "It is also a cautionary tale that Japanese Americans should be well aware of and McReynolds gets it right when he writes: ‘bad things happen when good people sit back.’ He, however, does identify some of the people who took the risk and supported the Japanese during… difficult times.”

But Professor Maeda, like all great teachers, is not one to give a top grade without critical comment. He takes the writer to task about documentation.

“Vanished is… a researcher’s nightmare,” he adds. “There are no footnotes or endnotes indicating where the information came from other than a general listing of sources...."

He's right. That could have been better.

Basketball Star Sumi Tashiro Passes

The star of Lompoc’s pre-World War II girls basketball team, has died.

Sumi Tashiro Tsuji died the morning after Christmas at the age of 88 in Monterey. Cancer had been discovered in August.

Sumi may be seen here on the Photographs page of this website in a photo with Chiyo Iwamoto Kobayashi and Kaoru Bill Honda. They are each holding up Block L’s which they received last May when they visited Lompoc.

In Vanished in the team photo from 1941, Sumi is seen front row center with a basketball directly in front of her knees. I don’t think that was an accident. In my two long interviews with Sumi, the basketball team was a joyful topic of conversation. After the 1939-40 season she was named to a Central Coast All-Star team which played Stockton, the state champion She was proud of that, just as she was for the 700 series she bowled years later in Hanford, the first woman to accomplish the feat in that city.

Sumi was always full of life. She had a great smile, a voice like a foghorn, and she was candid, willing to talk about drinking that took place at the Nihonjin picnics, and about the controversy over whether Katie Inouye, a Christian, should be allowed to play on the Lompoc basketball team. The two teamed at guard on the squad.

Katie never saw Sumi again after they graduated high school together in 1941. Even at the gatherings occasioned by Vanished, they missed one another. Sumi came to Lompoc in May 2010 but Katie could not. Katie came in October when Sumi could no longer travel.

“She was the one I really wanted to see,” Katie said today. “I used to go over there (to the Tashiro farm outside Lompoc) and eat tomatoes out of the warehouse. She was very independent. She never hesitated to speak out. I had good times with her. She was a roughneck like me.”  

Sumi worked most of her life as a hairdresser. She was widowed in 1986 and lived in recent years with her brother Yeiki in Manteca. Of the four Tashiro siblings, only Yeiki survives.

John Does Radio Gig

Hi Everybody:

Tuesday I appeared on Colin Marshall's radio show on KCSB, the UC Santa Barbara campus radio station.  Bill and Lucille Honda, and probably a few others listened as I was interviewed by Nick Welsh, Executive Editor of the Santa Barbara Independent. I didn't really plan the points I wanted to make, and I rambled like an old farmer. Ah well, it's a learning experience. Next time I'll come at least a little prepared with talking points.

In other news, Dr. Kent Haldan has agreed to speak with me at the Berkeley Buddhist Temple on February 6, so that will really be a thorough discussion.

To all who have read the book, talked to a friend about the book, sought shelf space in a bookstore, or in any way helped make the book visible, thank you so much.

We wish you the happiest of holidays.

John