by Pat Shiono
They met at a hospital bedside; fell in love; and had a most unusual honeymoon.
Yuri and Hank met at a maternity ward in San Francisco in 1942. Yuri went to the hospital to meet a friend’s new baby and Hank just happened to be there too. It was love at first sight as Yuri and Hank soon started dating and became very close despite their differences: she was a city girl, born in San Francisco, and he was from Cortez, a small Japanese American farming community in central California.
Hank was serving in the Army when Yuri and all the other 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were rounded up and put into “Assembly” centers. Yuri was sent to the Tanforan racetrack just outside of San Francisco. To escape imprisonment, Yuri went with her friend Edith to St Paul, Minnesota, where they were hired as a maid and cook by a wealthy railroad baron.
My mother often reminisced about the big parties she and Edith hosted for the Nisei soldiers who were in the Military Intelligence Service at Fort Snelling. She said they wanted to have the boys over for a big send-off before they were shipped off to war. Of course they held the parties when their employers were traveling, and she said the family never questioned the increases in grocery and liquor bills. Sadly, some of these young soldiers never returned from the war.
Yuri and Hank were reunited in St. Paul, where they became engaged. They were married at the Fort Snelling Chapel. Yuri was granted a special pass by the WRA (War Relocation Authority) in 1943 to leave St. Paul to travel, and Hank got leave from the military.
Yuri and Hank then embarked on their honeymoon–a 3,000-mile train ride to visit their families in two different concentration camps: Yuri’s family was at Topaz, Utah, and Hank’s at Heart Mountain, Wyoming.
For over 50 years, Yuri and Hank kept silent about their honeymoon trip. It wasn’t until Hank passed away in 1988 that Yuri told me about it. While playing her favorite card game, Hana, Yuri shared her honeymoon story with me. But she didn’t tell me many details about the trip itself or their reunion with their families. I wondered what they experienced during the long train rides and hoped that my father’s military uniform protected them from abuse from a hostile public.
My mother also never talked about how they felt when they saw their parents and siblings locked up behind barbed wire.
At Topaz, they were able to meet their new niece, Mako, born in prison to Yuri’s brother Machi and his wife Toki. And Yuri’s mother and father, Kiku and Asajiro, must have been thrilled and reassured to see the newlyweds. When the couple got to Heart Mountain, Hank was able to reunite with his mother and father, Hana and Tetsuzo, sisters Miyo and Toey, and brother Art. Hank didn’t get to see his brother Jimmy because he too was serving in the Army. They were not able to stay long as Hank had to return to active duty and Yuri back to her work furlough assignment in St. Paul.
When the war ended, Hank was on a warship headed for Europe when the ship was ordered back to the US. Yuri went with Hank’s family to live in Chicago because they heard there were lots of jobs there. The family was hired in a factory that made clocks. Hank joined the family in 1946 in Chicago after being discharged from the Army. A year later Yuri and Hank welcomed their son, Ken. They soon tired of Chicago’s weather and they all moved back to San Francisco, where I was born. Yuri and Hank were married for 45 years and were very active members of a strong Japanese American community in San Francisco.
I’m proud of my parents for daring to take such an amazing honeymoon trip together. I like to think that, despite the circumstances, reuniting with their loved ones and meeting new family members comforted them and enabled them to start their new life together with a sense of hope.
About the contributor: Born and raised in San Francisco, Pat Shiono was active in the vibrant Japantown community as a member of the Girl Scouts and Buddhist Temple. Pat received an AA degree from San Francisco City College and a BS, MS and PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Hawaii. She worked at the National Institutes of Health as a perinatal epidemiologist, then became a founding member of the Packard Foundation’s Center for the Future of Children. After retiring, Pat helped create Kokoro Assisted Living in Japantown and worked to obtain National Historic Landmark status and National Park Service management for the Tule Lake Segregation Center. Pat is an avid golfer and cooks Nisei style Japanese dishes the way her mother and grandmother taught her.
Copyright Patricia Shiono, 2022. All rights reserved.