gotohealth's Blog

 Socially connecting is one of the important life managing activities for a fulfilling and healthy longevity. The Nisei Veteran’s organization in Seattle manage a lunch program on the first Friday of every month and today we had “pulled pork”. Keith and Maryann Yamaguchi started serving lunches for over 50 of us from 2015 and through Covid. I used to help when there was a similar program in the 1980s. I now sit at a table where everyone is close to 100 years old! 

 

John Ikeda takes time to bring his parents, Junks and Mary, from their Lakeshore Renton residence each month and helps everyone squeeze in to the gated parking area. Junks and Mary set an example of “Strong Parenting”. The three of us in the picture engaged in a conversation about the future of our Japanese Heritage Community the next 25 years?? Junks said over and over, “You need to find a message that everyone will find compeling and of interest to the individually….” We continued to brainstorm ideas about how we can benefit from our heritage legacy. Of course we are at the Nisei Vets where we honor the bravery of the WWII soldiers decorated for their courage.

 

My husband and I set a goal to pass on our heritage values and to see great grandchildren see their great grandchildren be honest, kind, respectful and responsible parents.

 

What happens at these Nisei Vet Lunches are examples of the kinds of parents and friends we want to see 100 years from now. Children are excited to bring their elderly parent and meet others. Everyone is greeted by name with a host of greeters and given a name tag - so we don’t have to wait for their names to ooze up into our consciousness after we get back home?:-)  Volunteers immediately served tea and distribute hostess treats. There is almost competition for being servers and providing donations for Bingo prizes played after the meal.

 

I think we could establish a protocol for community leadership with some of the values the Japanese in America practice. We have been the majority minority during the last 100 years here in the Pacific Northwest and have been extraordinarily responsible, honest engaged, caring and healthy citizens wherever we have lived.

Listening to an Oprah podcast, I thought, “I want a Maya Angelou mentorship in my life.” Then it occurred to me that I could learn to be a Maya Angelou for others. I don’t have to be six feet tall. I don’t have to have a doctorate. What Maya does for Oprah is to “bring out her best real self”!

 

For the last 50 years, I have named six people that I consider mentors in my life. The first is my husband, Sam Shigeru Goto, with whom I set a goal to pass on our heritage values to our great grandchildren, whom we expected to see and to be:  “Kind, Responsible, Caring individuals who see similar great grandchildren themselves.”  There is also a suggestion that if parents decide to work at being better people, the children will also follow?

 

Similar to the Oprah example, the great grandchildren don’t have to be biological. Also, I don’t want to be a Maya Angelou all by myself. There is also science and research citing that one-half of our real selves are from our biological heritage and circumstances. Also that another quarter is the internal tape recording of the first seven or eight years of our life and environment. The last quarter of our “Real Self” is from the choices we make from those first two areas.

 

At age 87, a host of my lunch friends have passed on. My husband left eight years ago and I have felt lonely. But, because of Covid, I have filled most of my time with learning and podcasts.

 

So, here’s part of my new plans for at least the next ten years of my life - starting with goals for using the six important F’s of my life:

 

*Faith - “Belief in finding and acting daily on my God given purposes!”
*Family - I live with an inspiring three-generation household.

“EVERY CHILD CAN BE EDUCATED” -Dr.Shinichi Suzuki

 

 

A Spring day walk, April 1967, around the block on Seattle’s

Capitol Hill with our 3-year-old, changed my life! That was when

I was talked into starting Suzuki Violin Music Lessons for our

older daughter, Lynette, with Sister Annella at the Little White House

across the street from Holy Names Academy.

 

Sister Annella saw that I was of Japanese heritage and a teacher was coming to Seattle from Matsumoto, Japan, where Dr. Shinichi Suzuki had developed his Talent Education program. Suzuki music was being introduced to the USA by people like Vilem Sokol of Seattle’s Youth Symphony and his friend John Kendall of Oberlin College. Sokol also lived in our  neighborhood and his children were involved. When Mihoko Yamaguchi arrived, I was asked to translate for some of her first sessions with the teachers Sister Annella had recruited for her Suzuki program. I learned the importance of skill building in the early years before high school for good self-esteem.

 

I helped incorporate the Suzuki School of Music in Seattle. Also at that time, my husband and I set a goal, “To see responsible, kind and honest great grandchildren with good self-esteem”.  We have five grandchildren. Number three is graduating from UC Santa Barbara with some first place swimming titles and number four is graduating from high school with a first place Washington State Drill Team title for Mercer Island High School Drill Team.  Self-esteem is built with learning a skill. Dr. Suzuki starts children at 3-years of age to get in 10 years of practice before the independent high school years.

 

Today, April 2026 almost sixty years later, I am finding another life changing mentor. I am listening to Arthur Brooks, professor of “Happiness”, a course he teaches at the Harvard Business School, saying, “I teach HAPPINESS and teach you to teach HAPPINESS!”. Brooks grew up in Seattle's Queen Ann hill and was involved, maybe with Suzuki in his preschool years, but with Sokol’s Seattle Youth Symphony with his French horn.

 

I find synchronicity in these mentorships in being similarly led to serve my USA community with aspects of my Japanese Heritage. Brooks constantly cites examples from Asia for happiness and fulfillment with right brain “why” learning to balance western left brain “how, what, where” learning.  My master’s thesis was on the difference between the right and left hemispheres of our brain.

 

My new mantra will be to: “Teach to teach Happiness!” So, where do I start? I will gather and reorganize some of the successful tools I have developed the 87 years of my life - developing skills, learning from my heritage, writing and sharing. 

 

My first goal is to have deep conversations and find more connections. Last week I had lunch with Bruce, owner of Chin Music Press. We agreed to develop a speaking, writing and publishing group for the purpose of sharing our Japanese Heritage Values with school children around our Washington state. I started a writing group, 35 years ago, OMOIDE (memories), that still meets monthly and publishes regularly. OMOIDE VI publication is part of JCCCW (Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington) which I helped incorporate 2003.

 

The unfair incarceration of all those of Japanese heritage during WWII in the 10+ prison camps around th USA is a way of getting attention. The stories we share about overcoming the horrors of the incarceration, discrimination and becoming successful are key. Research backs the value of heritage story knowledge and writing.

 

First, I educate the real child in myself and practice being a good person. Then, as a team: BE INVOLVED WITH THINGS THAT MAKE LIFE BETTER!!

Today was lunch at Sushi Joa on Mercer Island with Elaine and her two younger brothers Darrell & Zen Kitamura. This occasion follows the first meeting, two weeks ago, with Elaine at the Seattle Public Library, where my daughter, Kelly, was a speaker for AANHPI (Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in the United States) conference. 

 

As Elaine was passing in front of me at the conference lunch break, she stopped and asked, “Are you Kelly’s mother? I’m Elaine Kitamura.”

 

I recognized the name as she confirmed that they were the family that ran the Kokusai Japanese movie theater  on Maynard until the 1980s.  I mentioned, “I knew your mother, Mitsuye Tanaka, from Ontario, Oregon, where I grew up and have been trying to connect with her.”

 

Elaine started to cry and pulled out kleenex saying, “Everyone knows my dad, but you are the first person I’ve met that knew my mom. She was quiet and never talked about herself. I want to bring my brothers and hear some stories about her.”

 

Today, Elaine brought her two younger brothers. Evidently, Mitsuye was born in Kent, Washington and had been sent back to Japan for her education. She was walking to school with friends when the Hiroshima Bomb knock then in to a ditch and burned her neck and back. 

I was able to add what I knew about their Tanaka heritage when I was 10-yrs-old and living in Eastern Oregon, where the Snake River divides Idaho and Oregon.

 

Mitsuye was brought back to the USA after WWII because of the dire conditions in Japan. Her dad and my grandpa were best friends and had migrated to Eastern Oregon in 1937, when the building of Owyhee Dam provided irrigation for farming that desert area and provided new opportunities because of discrimination and hard times in the Seattle area. Then, with the WWII incarceration of West coast Japanese, Ontario Mayor was the one of the only ones who welcomed the Japanese to help them start over. Therefore, our families were involved with establishing businesses to serve the influx of 100 of us before WWII to 1000 of us Japanese after. Ontario population was 5000 when I graduated.

 

The short time Mitsuye was in Ontario, she helped her dad run the Eastside Hotel while “Old-man Tanaka” as we called him, played the Japanese games of Hana and Go with his friends like my grandpa. Grandpa was the babysitter of my baby cousin and me while our parents ran the Ontario Fish Market business across the street/highway 30. Mitsuye was the one who changed the diapers and made “onigiris” for us while the men played. There was a skating rink in the first floor business spaces and she took me to go and learn skating.

 

The four of us got excited as we contined to share stories and agreed to work on a book, as children of business owners growing up in Seattle’s Japan Town after WWII. The siblings confirmed they were with their Dad as he interacted with various business owners dealing with “cash exchanges”. We’ve agreed to keep getting together.

 

Sitting at the next table with only the shiny head showing, Mike George of Bezos Academy, couldn’t help but say something about our excitement. Elaine, with her irresistible nature, drew him into possibly working with us!

 

My life continues to be a series of coincidences and serendipity situations! Love it!!