A simple watch helped connect Yakima Valley woman to her late husband during WWII Japanese incarceration

For as long as he can remember, Matt Gilmore’s family business has sold tickets to the popular sukiyaki dinner at the Yakima Buddhist Church in Wapato.

Gilmore grew up working at Dunbar Jewelers in Yakima and recently took over ownership from his parents, Pat and Linda Gilmore, who bought the historic Yakima business in 1978. The sukiyaki dinner began in 1961 and typically takes place on the first Sunday of March in the Bussei Kaikan (Buddhist Hall) next to the church.

At its heart the dinner is an eagerly anticipated community reunion, and the Gilmore family is part of that. It began with Matt Gilmore’s great-grandfather, James Bernard Gilmore, and continued with his grandfather, John Gilmore. They operated Gilmore Jewelers in Wapato for 75 years.

The story of the connection between his family and the Japanese community is one that touches on the value of neighbors and the history of discrimination against the Japanese during World War II. It is tied to the story of Hatsue and Frank Fukuda, and their enduring love.

Japanese communities in Wapato, Toppenish and Yakima were thriving and growing when Japan’s surprise aerial attack of the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, killed more than 2,400 service members and civilians and pushed the United States into World War II.

At the time, there was an undercurrent of suspicion by some toward people of Japanese descent – no matter their citizenship status or obvious devotion to the country where they farmed, owned businesses and raised their children. While it had ebbed and flowed over years, things culminated on Feb. 19, 1942, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed and issued Executive Order 9066. It forced more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent into 10 concentration camps in the West and Arkansas. This weekend is the 80th anniversary of that devastating order.

Hatsue Fukuda of Wapato and the more than 1,000 people of Japanese ancestry in the Yakima Valley had only a few weeks to sell, give away or find safe storage for nearly everything they owned, from farm equipment and vehicles to their furniture, household goods, clothing and pets. Among her most precious possessions were the ashes of her husband, Tokichi “Frank” Fukuda, who died in 1941 after gallbladder surgery.

She had been keeping his ashes inside the church, near the altar. How could she safeguard something so irreplaceable after she was forced to leave her home in early June 1942, with no idea of when she would return? Whom could she trust?

James Gilmore had a solution.

Hard work brings success

Japanese immigrants first began coming to the Yakima Valley in the late 19th century, drawn by opportunities to farm and work on the Valley’s massive irrigation projects. They cleared sagebrush in the Lower Valley and planted nurseries, orchards and row crops. As more came, they created distinct “Japan towns” in Wapato, Toppenish and Yakima that included shops, restaurants, hotels and agriculture-related businesses.

On March 15, 1930, members of the Buddhist congregation dedicated their church at 212 W. Second St. in Wapato. They called it the Yakima Buddhist Church, to reflect the Yakima Valley. Toppenish and Yakima also had Buddhist churches.

The Buddhist church in Wapato is just a few lots away from the Japanese community’s Methodist church on West Second Street. Between them stood the Japanese language school, where Hatsue and Frank Fukuda were recruited to teach before the Depression, said Yesenia Navarrete Hunter, assistant professor of history at Heritage University in Toppenish.

Hunter was born in Mexico and came to the United States as a child, growing up in Wapato. She graduated summa cum laude from Heritage in 2016 and she and her family moved that year to Los Angeles, where she started a five-year graduate history program at the University of Southern California.

They returned to the Valley last summer and Hunter will complete her Ph.D. dissertation, “Entangled Histories of Land and Labor on the Yakama Reservation,” next month and defend it in April.

She wrote about the Fukudas, and Hatsue’s story, in her dissertation. Research led her to the work of Japanese journalist and community historian Kazuo Ito, who wrote “Issei: A History of Japanese Immigrants in North America.” Issei is a Japanese word for the Japanese people who were the first generation to immigrate to the Americas.

Ito’s massive book is one of the richest English-language resources of primary-source material from the Issei about their lives in North America before World War II, according to an article on www.historylink.org. Originally written in Japanese, “Issei” holds Hatsue’s story and is where Hunter discovered it.

Many people within and outside Japanese communities in the Pacific Northwest, and even people in Japan, knew of Frank Fukuda, a renowned baseball coach. He led the Wapato Nippons baseball team, which was formed in 1928 and won multiple local and regional titles in the 1930s.

Less is known of Hatsue. The couple came together to Wapato, where they settled into a busy routine of teaching the Japanese language to nisei – children of the first-generation immigrants from Japan – along with traditional art, dance and other sports such as judo.

All three of the Yakima Valley’s major Japan towns grew substantially, but anti-Japanese sentiment surfaced over the years, especially during economic downturns, author Thomas Heuterman wrote in his master’s thesis and his book, “The Burning Horse.” Haystacks and equipment belonging to Japanese farmers were deliberately set on fire at different times and plots were uncovered to bomb specific properties.

The Japanese language school was damaged in a suspicious fire, sold and later demolished. A cinder block garage stands on the site now.

Loss and support

With the beginning of World War II, hostility toward people of Japanese ancestry intensified. Against that backdrop, Hatsue lost her beloved husband. Being forced from her home to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in northwest Wyoming compounded her already crushing personal loss.

The emotion of that time in Hatsue’s life resonated strongly with Hunter, who completed the first chapter of her dissertation in October 2020. In a Facebook post, Hunter celebrated the completion and shared a summary of Hatsue’s story.

“I cried when I wrote her words. Understanding the urgency and the longing for place, feeling the sense of the looming dislocation must have been so difficult,” she wrote in her post.

Hatsue first went to a local mortician to see if he could store Frank’s ashes, “but he was afraid if the public knew he was holding the ashes there he would get some backlash,” Hunter wrote. There is a funeral home right across the street from the Yakima Buddhist Church, and because Frank’s ashes were in the church, she may have headed there because it was so close, longtime member Dave Sakamoto mused.

With the mortician’s refusal, Hatsue went to Gilmore Jewelers and James Bernard Gilmore agreed to help her out, Hunter wrote. The jewelry store “was a fixture in the Wapato community and was very much supported by and supportive of the Japanese community,” said Lon Inaba of the Yakima Buddhist Church.

Gilmore, whom most knew as Jim, devised “a way to keep a small part of the ashes in a dollar watch for me,” Hunter quoted Hatsue as saying in Ito’s book.

“He painted the crystal with a metallic paint something like lead, to make it opaque, and removing the works, he put the ashes in the cavity,” Hatsue said. “Both sides of the watch he inscribed inside with my husband’s secular name and his immortal Buddhist name.

“I carried this watch with me everywhere, for even if I was to die in some unknown place I wanted to be with him.”

Hatsue wore the watch to the Portland Assembly Center in Oregon, where Valley residents of Japanese ancestry were forced to sleep in former animal stalls while construction at Heart Mountain was finished. Hatsue and the others were taken by train to Heart Mountain.

Not all stayed there, though. Some got out to attend college; others were able to leave for work on nearby or distant farms. At some point, Hatsue was transferred to the Minidoka War Relocation Center near Hunt, Idaho. That’s where she posed for a portrait wearing the watch. Hatsue continued to teach the Japanese language and traditional arts while at Minidoka.

After leaving the camp, Hatsue didn’t return to the Yakima Valley. That was common; only about 10% of Valley residents of Japanese ancestry came back. Some had severed their ties so completely, there was nothing to return to, and friendships made in the camps led to opportunities in Southern California and distant cities such as Chicago and St. Louis. Many felt unwelcome in their former homes.

Hatsue wasn’t far from the Valley, though. She moved to Seattle, Hunter said, and died and was buried there. As with much of her life, details of Hatsue’s years in Seattle are unknown. And she doesn’t know what happened to the rest of Frank Fukuda’s ashes.

Hunter believes Hatsue kept the watch for many years. Perhaps she was buried with it. Precious enough to wear to two American concentration camps, the watch probably was always physically close to her.

“I love thinking about her going about her life, having a little bit of her husband always with her,” Hunter said.

Amid hostility, community champions

Inaba, a longtime leader in the Yakima Buddhist Church and the Valley’s Japanese and farming communities, had never heard the story of Hatsue’s watch. Nor had Matt Gilmore. He paused upon learning of his great-grandfather’s honorable deed.

At the same time, he wasn’t surprised. In the 75 years Gilmore Jewelers was open, the Gilmore family supported the Japanese community in ways beyond customer service. For example, his grandmother, Nora Baldwin, helped when the Yakima Buddhist Church needed to be painted, Gilmore said.

“I remember her always taking me in the church at the sukiyaki dinner,” Gilmore said. His family attended it every year, and he has taken his children.

While not everyone was supportive, the Gilmores were among several civic leaders and prominent families who helped members of the Valley’s Japanese community, safeguarded their property and possessions and spoke out on their behalf in the time they were incarcerated until the camps closed in 1945. They also helped families from afar during the years they spent at those camps, providing updates, sending money and items as they could.

They included Esther Short Boyd, who ran the R.R. Short Hardware store in Wapato, and Wapato farmer Dan McDonald Sr. They testified in Seattle in March 1942 on behalf of Yakima Valley residents of Japanese heritage potentially impacted by Executive Order 9066.

Boyd and McDonald also stored and watched over property and belongings of Japanese community members. Mary Sakimura asked Boyd to oversee her grocery store. The Hata family, who had subleased land from McDonald since 1927, put their farm equipment in his care. McDonald stored dozens of personal items of the Wada and Seto families and others in his attic and an outbuilding.

And in watching over the Yakima Buddhist Church and its intricate altar – dismantled and stored under the stage of the adjoining gymnasium – Boyd and McDonald helped safeguard the precious heart of a community that continues today.

No doubt there are others who have helped members of their community when they needed it most. Not all important gestures are widely known.

Jewelers “do little things here and there,” Matt Gilmore said. “We know something might be sentimental, but we don’t really realize it at the time, what we’re doing. … We try to do little things when people need help.

“The same type of thing he was doing back then, we try to do a little of that to this day. You’ve got to support the community,” Gilmore said. “It’s like that ripple in the sand that he had his little part in. It’s pretty neat.”

Jim Gilmore was doing his job as a jeweler when he helped Hatsue find a way to keep her beloved husband close. In creating a solution, he showed his support in an ordinary yet extraordinary way.

“I think the beauty of the story is in his craft, he used his abilities to help her carry the ashes,” Hunter said.