PLACES - LANDMARKS

All families are as branches of a tree. We grow in different directions, but our roots remain the same.  

Mountain King, CA

Where the George Juichi Fujimori Family began their fortune working at a gold mining camp.

Enumclaw, WA

Where Jack Hirokichi Yamaoka and his picture bride Fukuyo Fujikawa began their fortune working at a lumber mill camp.

Stockton

Where George Juichi Fujimori began his business fortune with a dry goods store, gas station, warehouse, grocery store, farm land, offices 

Mike will tell you how this memory haunts my dreams of Sunday night Japanese movies in the fellowship hall to the left, Japanese language and Sunday School classes in the middle building, and Sunday church in the building on the right.  - jyt                                                                         Album LINK

Don Nakayama's

This extraordinary presentation gives us a brief glimpse into the agony the Issei Nisei, and Kibei endured.


Press the Image or this LINK

Ft Lincoln, North Dakota

A WWII Japanese Internment Camp where George Juichi Fujimori was first sent before Tule Lake and before Rohwer


Link

Tule Lake, California

A WWII Japanese Internment Camp where Takeda and Fujimori were held, where nearly 1,500 babies were born and over 300 people died. At its peak capacity, Tule Lake was the temporary home to more than 18,000 internees and 1,200 soldiers. 


Link

Rohwer, Arkansas

A WWII Japanese Internment Camp where the Fujimoris, Sakakuras, Yamaokas were held as prisoners and where Christina Yamaoka was born. 

NB Yoshikazu Sakakura was the valedictorian of Rohwer HS

Album LINK                            LINK to Dr. Don's Powerpoint

Amache

A WWII Japanese Internment Camp where the Kusabas, Maedas, and XXX were held as prisoners, and where Dale Kusaba was born.

Album LINK

Hiroshima

Many of us have family members who knew EXACTLY what they were doing when the bomb was dropped. Obaachan Fukuyo Yamaoka was in the kitchen refilling the shoyu bottles from the large can. Gion-Machi is 7.4 kilometers from the epicenter.

Why did the bomb save our family's lives? During WWII, Uncle Masajiro, who had ALWAYS received sports exemptions as a non-athletic boy, became a bookkeeper for a bank.  At the end of the war, he was forced to go to a camp hidden in the bamboo groves of Hiroshima prefecture to learn how to fire a gun with wooden bullets in preparation to meet the long-anticipated American invasion. 

Obaachan herself had made 100s of haramaki for Japanese soldiers. She was born in the year of the Tiger, so her sewing was considered especially blessed. Toward the end of the war, she, too, attended military practice to meet the seasoned American combat troops with the naginata. The atomic bomb saved thousands of Japanese civilians' lives.  Why was the Nagasaki bomb necessary? The Japanese government hid the science behind the Hiroshima bomb from its population. On Aug. 9, after Washington dropped the second atomic bomb (on Nagasaki), Japan’s war minister, Gen. Korechika Anami, asked his fellow members of the Supreme War Council, “Would not it be wonderous for the whole nation to be destroyed like a beautiful flower?”   Yurichan, who was a koto teacher, brought her classes of students to the Hiroshima bomb after math to help with clean up and rescue. All of them contracted horrible atomic bomb diseases. The American government established special hospitals and clinics to provide medical care throughout post-war Japan.

Denver

Where the Fujimoris and Yamaokas went after release from the WWII internment camp. The government prohibited Japanese-American citizens from living on the West Coast during the war so many stayed there.