Yoshio Shimazu’s parents first came to West Los Angeles in the early 1900s, settling into a house one block east of Sawtelle Blvd., on Beloit Ave., in the era before half of the block was destroyed to build the 405 freeway. Yoshio grew up in the area, attending University High School, and was set to enroll at Trade Tech College just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor upturned the lives of his entire community.
The Shimazus were first sent to Manzanar, then Tule Lake which is where Yoshio met his future wife, Marian Yamamoto. The two were amongst the last Nikkei to be released from camp, in March of 1946. They made their way back to Sawtelle, especially as Marian’s childhood home on Terminal Island in Long Beach had been all but erased by U.S. officials during “evacuation.”
Before WWII, Yoshio had wanted to become an architect, but those opportunities were few and far between for Japanese Americans after the war. Like so many others in the area, he turned to gardening instead.
Shimazu’s son Kirk explained that his father was “hard-nosed, everything for the family, work as much as you can. Gardening was one of the avenues in which a lot of Japanese Americans ended up pursuing to make ends meet.” However, it wasn’t just his father’s work ethic that Kirk remembered: “My father was involved in cars for as long as I've known him. I have a lot of old pictures of him, always standing by a car.”
Growing up, Kirk would see a parade of new cars and trucks coming through the house, much to the consternation of his mother. This was particularly true one day in 1957 when Yoshio came home with a 1956 Ford F-100 pickup truck. “I remember my mom being a little bit upset,” Kirk said, recalling her asking Yoshio, “Why are you buying a new car and whatnot?”
This truck ended up being special, however. “Most Japanese American gardeners had the typical service truck that was older, utilitarian,” Kirk explained. “My dad’s was a little different because he wanted his truck to be like his own personality.”
Nowhere was this better seen than when Yoshio needed to get the engine replaced. Instead of installing a stock engine, Yoshio went with a 325 Dodge HEMI. First introduced by Chrysler in the early 1950s, “HEMIs” became renowned in the performance world for putting out massive horsepower that you would normally install into muscle cars. In this case, Yoshio was putting his HEMI into a gardening truck.
That Ford pickup became a profound part of Kirk’s adolescence as he would regularly accompany his father in the truck for gardening gigs: “While he was doing his work, I would be polishing his car. There was a little spot on the fender where I rubbed through the paint.” He later learned to drive in that same truck.
However, Kirk didn’t fully realize how many other people in West L.A. knew about his father’s pickup until decades later. After his parents had both passed away, Kirk decided to do a complete restoration of the truck, and when he spoke to Ted Toki at Westside Performance Speed Shop, Ted asked him “Does your dad have a black truck by chance? Is it a Ford and did it have a HEMI in it?” This is when Ted told Kirk: “You know, your dad was known as the hot rod gardener of West L.A.”
Kirk didn’t realize it in his youth but Yoshio had created quite the reputation for himself with his F-100. Gary Matsubara, another Sawtelle native (and son of famed drag racer Sush Matsubara) didn’t know Yoshio personally but knew all about the truck. His younger brother had seen Yoshio race it at Lions Drag Strip in Wilmington, and as a street racer himself, people warned Gary: “Never race the Japanese guy with the lawnmower in the back.”
Cruising J-Town originally asked to borrow Yoshio’s truck for the exhibition because it was important to have a work vehicle—especially a gardening truck—represented and it was hard to pass up a car once owned by a “hot rod gardener”. But for Kirk, his motivation to restore the truck wasn’t for its speed or performance; it’s how this pickup served as a reminder of the lifelong friendship Kirk enjoyed with his father:
This truck created a commonality for both of us, allowing us to form a special relationship, first as a father teaching his son how to do things but as we grew older, we also became friends. I’m hoping that, in those years, I was able to teach my dad something and give him something back. That’s the relationship that’s important to me in the story of my dad’s truck.
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Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community, an exhibition presented by the Japanese American National Museum, has been extended and will be on view until December 14, 2025, at the Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery at ArtCenter College of Design, 1111 South Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena, CA 91105. Learn more.
© 2025 Oliver Wang
