After he died, I put the unopened Downtown Diner set in my closet because it made me sad to see it. We put the mini figures of our family on his altar, and seeing the flags that he had created, I felt he expressed his memories through his creations. If he were alive today, he would be deeply troubled by the current political climate and disturbing similarities to past injustices, and I was inspired to create “Town Hall Protest” in his memory.
Almost exactly one year after his death my father appeared to me in a dream: he was sitting in the Downtown Diner, and I knew then that I needed to take it out of the closet and build it.
So I did, and, with a picture of him beside it, we built it together.
Special thanks to Yoko Matsuura Honda, Shoko’s older sister, who knew more about their father’s history; and who contributed her own childhood memories to this story. All photos are courtesy of Shoko Matsuura Umekubo except the “barbed wire”, which is from Freepix.com.
About the contributors: Shoko Matsuura Umekubo was born in 1956 in San Francisco, CA. She has lived in the Richmond District her entire life. After graduating from George Washington High School, City College of San Francisco, and SF State, she attended a pharmacy tech program at the VA hospital. and worked at Mt Zion Hospital for 11 years. She was a pharmacy tech, and then a laboratory assistant in the Virology Dept. After she and her husband John had a daughter, Lisa, she became a full-time mother. She has a passion for decorating, arts and crafts, and of course, LEGO.
Yoko Matsuura Honda was born in 1952. Yoko attended City College of San Francisco, UC Berkeley and UCSF School of Pharmacy. After graduating, she married her classmate Dennis Honda and settled in the East Bay, working 40 years as a hospital pharmacist at John Muir Health. After her two daughters were born, Yoko continued part-time work while raising her family. Now retired, she treasures time with her granddaughter and enjoys vegan baking, puzzles and LEGO®.
Copyright 2025, Shoko Matsuura Umekubo. All rights reserved.