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.