I remember going up the wide, worn, musty, carpeted stairs of Hotel Pacific. We climbed up to the second story, and to the left was my stoic grandmother, Shigeno Nishikawa, standing in front of her room to give us a joy-filled greeting. We had not seen each other since she left us in Camp 1 Poston (then known as Colorado River Relocation Center) to live with her son Iwao’s family in Denver. Grandmother took care of Nancy and Terri in the camp while my father worked in the fields of Idaho and Montana, and my mother taught tailoring.

There were five of us: my father, George Kakuda; my mother, Michiko Nishikawa Kakuda; my sisters, Nancy and Terri; my brother, Dick; and myself. We had driven from our rented home in Bolsa (now Fountain Valley, CA), and we all needed to use the bathroom. Grandmother used a communal bathroom down the hall. We thought it was quite nice as we normally used an outhouse.

She lived in a tiny room with a bed and a small desk. My parents were happy that my grandmother was living at the Hotel Pacific because it was owned by the Yamamotos, who were old friends and lived with us in our Poston barrack during World War II.

The kids were exiled to the sidewalk for our unruly behavior, where we went to watch the streetcars on San Pedro Street. Our reward was walking to a bustling Far East Restaurant on First Street to eat pakkai, ham mu, and cha shu with sodas in their first-floor black cubicles while the streetcars rumbled by. It was a favorite restaurant of the Southern California community, depending on the movement of chefs between restaurants.

It was three years after leaving imprisonment in Poston, and Shigeno was 64 years old. All her children were struggling to make a living and gather their wealth. She could not become a US citizen because of the Immigration Act of 1924. She was a proud woman and wanted to make her own way. She worked in the garment district, within walking distance from J-Town. She was paid piecemeal for her work, but even with little pay, she could make her way living in the Japanese community.

Her church was the Nishi Hongwanji (Hompa Hongwanji) Buddhist Temple on First Street. Her husband’s funeral, my parents’ wedding, and her funeral were held at the old and new temple.

Shigeno was able to pass her US citizenship test in 1954 at age 74, some 47 years after arriving in J-Town, Los Angeles, and was finally able to finally vote. She worked until about 1957, when, at age 77, she began collecting social security. She left J-Town in about 1960 to live with her daughter, Lil, and, eventually, all her children, who became successful.

She died in 1972 at age 89 in San Clemente, CA, while living with my parents, and is buried with her husband, Junkichi, at Evergreen Cemetery. He died 38 years prior.

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Postscript: Shigeno Nishimura was born in June 1883 in the Fukawa district, Japan, to a large farm family and was educated in Japan. She was the second wife of Junkichi Nishikawa, also from a family with a large farm.

Shigeno arrived in the United States with her husband in 1907 and boarded in J-Town. They later had six children in Harbor City, CA. Her husband managed to own about fifty acres in Harbor City, near the oil fields of Sepulveda Boulevard, where he leased his land to five Japanese farm families.

Her son Edward graduated from UC Berkeley and became Vice President of a large Japanese seafood company. Her son Mitsugi graduated from UCLA and was later forced to design military airports for Japan during WWII. He later successfully sued the US for the return of his citizenship, which went to the US Supreme Court. He subsequently built international airports, civic centers (Century City), and freeways (Pasadena Freeway and H-1 Hawaii) throughout the world.

All her children managed to overcome the trauma of WWII in Japan and in the US and flourished.

 

© 2025 Roy Kakuda