gotohealth's Blog

 My mother said on our weekly phone call, “Grandpa told me he didn’t want you to go to UCLA because the boys down there wear jeans.” We never talked long because calling was expensive in 1959.

 

This was in response to my choosing to transfer from Lewis & Clark Collage in Portland to either UCLA or U of Washington to finish my degree in nursing. My best friend from high school was in Los Angeles and we wrote letters to each other about the boys. The U of WA had a reputation for being the top school of nursing in the USA, so I chose the north direction with the encouragement from Mom and from her Dad? 

 

Growing up on Eastern Oregon and Western Idaho farms, I was written up in the Vale, Oregon, newspaper as the first third-generation of Japanese heritage born in that area of the few Japanese living there before WWII. Grandpa and friends had migrated to start row crop farming after being discriminated out of the dairy business in the greater Seattle area.

 

My world was very small. Our farm was in a place called Sand Hollow. It was 8 miles to school in Notus and 12 miles to shop in Caldwell, Idaho, a couple times a year. Later we moved back across the Snake River to Ontario, population 5000. Going to school in Portland, I was again isolated to the smaller campus life.   

 

I had passed my R.N. exam in Portland and took the train, arriving in Seattle, New Years Eve 1959-60. All my possession fit in to my blue Samsonite three-suitcase set and a metal trunk. Grandpa had arranged for me to stay with cousins, I interviewed at a couple of the hospitals and immediately got a job working in the Post-operative Surgical Ward of the King County. Hospital. 

 

Interestingly, in those days, we were taught to wear a hat and gloves when we went to interview for a job. Being poor at that time, I sewed all my own clothes, but I did buy shoes and a pillbox hat. The shoes were $15. I don’t know where I got the money for my nurses uniforms to start work? Maybe, I started with my student uniforms? 

 

Back to talking about the boys, my Mom told me on one of our weekly phone calls, “I heard you went out with… Grandpa doesn’t like that family.” How could they have heard about someone who I dated 500 miles away?? I knew they cared but the whole community caring was rather appalling at that time.

That’s when I realized that Grandpa had once been a community leader in the Seattle area and had a lot of connections that were maintained with business and social, even 500 miles away! I have also learned that the Japanese first generation immigrants in Seattle considered themselves more intellectual than those in California. 

 

Such is life!

This is a picture of our wedding reception line on December 24th, Christmas Eve 1961. Sam and I are at the Moore Hotel banquet room in Eastern Oregon, where my parents were still living in Ontario, Oregon and where I graduated from high school, just across the Snake River - not far from Boise, Idaho. 

 

As I remember, Grandma was under 5’ tall and extraordinarily effusive, like a chicken after laying an egg, and happy to greet everyone. I had not grown up with a grandma, so it was fun to be with her. During the WWII removal of all the Japanese from the West Coast she had lived in Ontario on this same block with the Moore Hotel. At this time, in 1961, she was living back in their home, her oldest son had built around 1939, on their property in Renton, Washington. 

 

This was the first wedding of Ume’s 35 grandchildren. Sam was the second son of her oldest daughter, Masako, married to Nisaburo “Frank” Goto. All 10 of Ume & Masataro Nakanishi’s children, surviving to adulthood, were married. The youngest, Koz, had married the year before.

 

In 1961, most of us with Japanese heritage were taught to stay within our community in marriage. Parents were disowning children who married outside their ethnicity, especially black. My grandpa Tsukamaki was known to be the go-between for several couples in our Eastern Oregon, Western Idaho community. For me, I thought Sam was good looking, tall and cute. We met in Seattle when I was completing my Public Health Nursing degree at the University of Washington. Sam had started his work as a Dental Technician in Seattle’s Medical Dental Building with Dr. Sproule, one of the creators of the U of WA Dental School.  

 

I had no idea about the history of our families. It wasn’t until 8 years after Sam and I married and I was hired by the U of WA Suzzallo Library Archives to start the “Pacific Northwest Japanese Collection” in 1970, that I started to interview people like Grandpa Tsukamaki and learned about his history and living In the Seattle area. Like other ethnic groups, busy working hard and looking to their future in America, they rarely talked about their hard times.

 

Grandma Ume called me Mi’-chan (child). Michiko is my middle name and that’s what I was called before I went to school. Also, Japanese elders could not pronounce “Delores”. Here’s some of what Grandma Nakanishi might have been thinking as she attended our wedding events and went to stay with relatives in Fruitland, across the Snake River, that snowy evening. 

 

Grandma might have been thinking, “When Mi’-chan’s mother, Kaname, was born (In 1918), my husband and Mi’-chan’s grandfather, Tsukamaki-san, were best friends…Those were hard times for us as Dairy farmers in Kent, Washington…Tsukamaki-san was there all night at the bedside of my husband (in 1934} when he died accidentally taking rat poison, what he thought was his stomach remedy on the kitchen shelf…my husband asked Tsukamaki-san to look after our family and see to the good marriages of our 10 children…’Kare’ (my husband) and Tsukamaki-san had agreed that Kaname be promised in betrothal to our son, Satoru! Much to my disappointment, each of them married someone else...but ‘Kamisama’ (God) has blessed us with this marriage of our grandchildren, I approve!!!” 

 

Sam and I would also agree that there could have been some universal hanky panky in the realm of life's go-between communicators that led to our meeting and the great life we had together!!

 Emotion is a complex, temporary psychological and physiological state and physical functioning is a reaction to internal or external events. Emotions influence our physical health! 

 

Alan Watkins is an influential thought leader, business consultant and doctor, celebrated for his pioneering work in cultivating sustainable, ethical, and purpose-driven organizations. Today, I’m listening to his TED talk and learning; the most important lesson he chooses to teach his children is: “control our own emotions”. 

 

I’m aware of a couple dozen emotions, but Watkins says there are over 34,000. I pride myself of my skill, learning to control my emotions, but now I need to deal with a new one most every moment as I negotiate the connections in my life? 

 

Dr. Watkins was first a medical doctor for about 12 years. Then, he arrived at the understanding that “treating emotions” with large corporations make a bigger difference in physical health and finding purpose in our lives:  helping metaphorically 500 employees at a single company influencing their family and community, instead of a single patient. His influence has become worldwide.

 

I first chose Nursing as my profession. I loved Lewis and Clark College, but soon hated my practical nurses training at Good Samaritan Hospital in 1957 because all we learned were procedures to follow. I was often the only one on duty, even as a student, at one of the hospital wings on the night shift those days. One of my inborn skills is to complete what I start. Therefore, I completed my formal education with a degree from the U of Washington in Public Health Nursing. Fortunately, I was fired from my first job with King County. 

 

Getting married and raising a family, for girls, was a priority in the 1950s but after the girls left home, I went back to the U of Washington and got my masters in Psychosocial Nursing. I loved that!! My thesis was: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN WITH RIGHT BRAIN AND LEFT BRAIN THINKING.

 

Thirty years later, I am a facilitator of a writing group: OMOIDE (MEMORIES) at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington (JCCCW), which I helped incorporate in 2003. I am currently finding purpose for our organization to benefit our larger Seattle/Washington community with Japanese Heritage Values as we publish the OMOIDE VI book.

 

Iain McGilchrist (born 1953[1]) is a British psychiatrist,[2] philosopher and neuroscientist who wrote the 2009 book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. He further suggests balancing our Wester World left brain thinking with right brain example from Asia and most often from Japan. Japanese Values is often cited in my estimation because Japan had the Edo period from 1600-1800ad for bringing their Arts and Culture to a PhD level. Research indicates that connecting with cultural heritage significantly boosts well-being and happiness

 Listening to Noah benShea: “Energy can only be transformed, we are energy. Ride the horse in the direction it’s going. The wind in your face, is God giving you kisses. The two great days in your life are the day you were born and the day you know why you were born. Religion is kindness. Humility is not afraid to be honest.” Today is March 3, 2026 with the usual anxiety producing news.

 

I treasure my opportunity to spend time in my room, watching podcasts like NEXT LEVEL SOUL and learn about myself. I don’t have to sell and downsize since Sam passed eight years ago because my second daughter and her two girls have come to live where she grew up, here on Mercer Island. I get to live in my room and let them take over the house; with all their friends and remodeling.

 

My response is to be grateful of my situation: I awaken each morning surrounded by the painting of Mercer Island, before we knew that we would eventually live here, given to me as a my wedding present by my husband of 56 years, as well as a photo of Sam and I looking at each other in the back of the church just after we said our vows. He’s holding up the back of the gown, with the long trailing back “obi” (Japanese sash), as it no longer needs to trail and I’m looking back at him. We both look particularly pleased with what just happened! It was a black and white snapshot taken by my uncle before we left for the reception. Now, it’s a 20x20 colored and framed picture given to me as a commemorative gift from the Washington State Historical Society when I got the award for their LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT commemoration in 2024 at the Tacoma museum.

 

Sam and I both grew up as part of the poorest farm families in our community and had a budget of $15 a week for groceries when we first married in 1961. We had very little extra money, but we were always not afraid to buy books and outside my room, in the first landing of the stairs, Sam built a floor to second story ceiling book shelf.

 

I cherish our view of Lake Washington and of the annual blossoming of the trees, now that it’s March. Inside, our house, built in 1973, has many plants hanging from our balcony and several from when Sam and I first married. He had a green thumb and so far we’re keeping them going. Our Seattle Capitol Hill house, living there 11 years, also had a view and we watched the north floating bridge across Lake Washington being built.

 

We have affirmations all over our rooms and the shadowbox above my computer desk reads:

 

I FEEL HEALTHY!

I FEEL HAPPY!

I FEEL TERRIFIC!

Yesterday, I had lunch with Ruth, sharing a crab dip at Palisades restaurant on Seattle’s waterfront. She grew up in a fundamental Christian environment like me. Neither Ruth nor I currently attend church regularly. So, I immediately felt free to share that I still pray, regularly, like I did as a child to an “entity in the sky”, but I went on to explain that my current path is to define that entity, assuming that as a human I am not capable of actually knowing. 

 

Ruth, wearing a pair of funky glasses, explained that she enjoyed getting together because, at age 87, I stay in the learning mode. We agreed that we are avoiding conversations with people who talk about their latest ailments. We also congratulated ourselves in being drug free and not on any prescriptive medications. 

 

There is an author named Reza Aslan. In his book titled GOD, he writes in his second chapter that each of us need to find our own definition of GOD. Aslan also assumes there are no two definitions that are alike, as humans.

 

I felt comfortable for Ruth and I to talk about politics. I have always thought about wanting to appreciate both left and right thinking. Sam and I chose to each register in the opposite party, when that was a requirement in Washington State. We now live in an environment where most of people I meet feel free to express themselves and do so. My goal is to keep learning and be comfortable with individuals who make me feel I have to believe and protest as they do - on both sides and in the middle.

 

I want “connections” and conversations, but I also need to learn to not react to areas of differences in the conversations. 

Last November, I had a resignation letter ready on email because I felt my ideas as a board member of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington  (JCCCW) were not being heard and at age 87, it was time for me to back away.  All I had to do was “send”.  I decided to give myself a few days to think about the wording. In the meantime my friend Lori came over for coffee. She talked me into holding off. 

 

I than decided that I could change my attitude and practice contributing what value I have and not be offended by disagreements. Therefore, as a member of the Fundraising Committee, we are reexamining our next steps and recruiting more ideas for how our Japanese arts and culture can benefit our Seattle/Washington community the next decades and even 100 years from now.

 

Listening to Simon Sinek interview Angela Duckworth, Harvard professor of psychology,  I am impressed with the statement: “Leveraging each individual’s skills for the good of the play”.  But because we're not suggesting Communism, I’m talking about finding the individuals with the best skills for contributing for the good of the whole. 

 

Today’s social media is reactive and individualistic. The daily news is divisive. I’ve stayed away from participating. But I’m also learning to manage my emotions and follow podcasters like Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor, who teaches HAPPINESS. That happiness is not an emotion, but a daily practice of, “enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning” and finding those qualities that I can practice in my individual daily path of life!

 

We can use the facts about how our Japanese in America were treated the last 100 years, with discrimination and unfair incarceration during WWII with Japan. We can publicize how we used our strong heritage values to overcome and succeed financially, to be the minority with the highest per capita income and white collar jobs.

 

I have a dream! Share our stories of hardship with school children across our state and inspire them to look at their own heritages to similarly use heritage values for succeeding in their own lives. Psychological research verifies this practice in success for finding our individual paths and purposes of life!

 

Tourists to Seattle can come and learn that one of the highlights of this area is of the Japanese in America contributions.