New CRC Blog- Hero in a folding chair next to your

By Tim Johnson

For more than three years we have met in the most unassuming office I have ever visited. Four press–on–letters from the local hardware store, the kind you put on a mailbox, are the only things that denotes its role in the community. We meet at this Sacramento location to discuss history – Japanese history and how we can secure, preserve and tell the story of the first Japanese settlement in North America, the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony.

In this most unassuming place, where the meeting table serves as the place where envelopes are stuffed, there was an even more unassuming man. He opened the office for us for each evening. Always deferent, he sat back from the table letting other talk about the “hows” and “what ifs”. Occasionally, at the end of a meeting, he would announce a clean up day at the grave on the settlement site. One day it was explained by another board member that Tom was the unofficial caretaker of Okei’s grave – the first Japanese woman known to be buried on U.S. soil.

Tom Fujimoto passed the other day. In the somber email note sent to the board, it was noted that Tom had been visiting the grave and making sure it was well tended for three decades – long before myself and the other non-Japanese in the room were even aware of the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony’s existence or importance. The email also noted that he served in the Military Intelligence Service in WWII. He received the Congressional Gold Medal for his service in 2011. Here he is with other distinguished veterans in a visit with Congresswoman Doris Matsui.

I had never met a Gold Medal honoree before and likely will never meet another. I certainly would not have expected one to make sure the Japanese American Citizens League office on a dark street in Sacramento was always open. I would not have imagined that he would tend the gravesite site of a 19–year old Japanese woman who died in 1871 for thirty years. In my greatest imagination, I would not have believed he would sit behind me. I am certain I will never meet another person as humble and committed as this hero of history who sat quietly one row back on a folding chair.

To learn more about Tom (and there is a lot more) click here. 

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Tim Johnson, CRC President & CEO