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.