Centenarian credits being quick to forgive and happy to help as keys to a long, happy life

The worst part about the pandemic for 100-year-old Ada Honda is not being able to visit her friends who are sick or in hospice.

Honda has spent her whole life taking care of others – from her parents and her in-laws, to disabled children in Spokane Public Schools and her fellow congregants at Highland Park United Methodist Church. Honda is always the first to offer a helping hand.

She was born to Kimiji and Chika Ichikawa on Nov. 13, 1920, in Walla Walla. She grew up living in the Antlers Hotel that her parents owned and operated. Rooms at that time were 50 cents a night, she recalls. The couple also had a restaurant up the block caller Antlers Cafe.

Her father immigrated from Japan in the early 1900s and then her mother came as a mail-order bride in 1911.

“I think it was pretty hard on my mom, especially, you know, coming over here and not knowing the man you’re going to marry,” Honda said.

Honda spent her childhood helping out at the family restaurant and playing with her older siblings, Tommy and Mary.

In 1938, when Honda was a junior in high school, her father was murdered at the back door of the family restaurant. He often would give meals to people from the nearby Chinatown who were in need.

“It was just so devastating,” said Karla Honda, Ada’s youngest daughter.

The death was tragic in more ways than one; the man who killed Kimiji Ichikawa was a Chinese friend who went “ballistic” after finding out his own parents had died back in China. The man felt so guilty he committed suicide in prison.

“It was another tragedy,” Karla Honda said.

Her father’s death is something Honda said she rarely talks about.

“That’s something I just could never talk about, because some of our best friends are Chinese and I would never tell them,” Honda said. “My sister and I held no hatred or remorse.”

However, the murder and her father’s legacy made a profound impact on her, she said.

“I think that’s where I probably got my love for helping others, because my father was like that,” Honda said.

After graduating from high school, Honda moved to Pasco and began working at a restaurant called the M & M owned by another Japanese family.

“I never grew up with Japanese (people). I really never realized I was Japanese because there were only two other families there, in Walla Walla,” she said. “The young people in Pasco were the first Japanese outside of Walla Walla that I ever met.”

In 1941, when Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, Honda said she was just as shocked as anyone.

“When I was working at that restaurant, we couldn’t believe it. None of us, though, were very political in those days. We really didn’t realize what was even happening,” Honda said. “It was very frightening.”

At first, Honda said she and her fellow Japanese employees at the M&M didn’t face any issues. Their regular customers continued to be kind to them, but when curfews were issued for Japanese people, the owners of the M & M had to sell their restaurant.

People of Japanese descent had a curfew of 8 p.m. and were not allowed to go within 5 miles of the post office or train station, Honda said.

“When Pearl Harbor happened, I wanted to be a part of it, go out and let them know how badly I feel, but then people wouldn’t know because of the way I look,” Honda said. “They wouldn’t know what was in my heart.”

At one point, Honda and her friends thought they would be sent to an internment camp, as had the Japanese and Japanese-American families living in the Puget Sound region and along the West Coast. But Pasco was deemed far enough inland that its Japanese population was allowed to stay.

“In Pasco we didn’t have to go; we thought we would, so we had our trunks, footlockers and everything ready to go,” Honda said.

After being told she wouldn’t be interned, it took Honda about six months to get permission to return to Walla Walla to see her mother and siblings.

During her time in Pasco, she met Harry Honda, a baseball player for the Wapato Nippons. He traveled to play games in Walla Walla and the two continued to see each other.

On Valentine’s Day in 1947, Harry proposed. The couple were married just a few months later, on June 15, 1947.

“He was one of the nicest that I’ve ever met,” Honda said. “And of course it helped that he was good looking.”

The couple moved in with Harry’s parents, Take and Zentaro Honda, in Spokane.

The Hondas had been interned at Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming, where their oldest son, Joel, had married.

“It was very difficult,” Honda said. “Can you imagine being told that you had to move and all you could take was a suitcase? It was very dramatic for them.”

While interned, Zentaro Honda became very ill. He eventually recovered but dealt with lasting health problems, Honda said. His wife, Take, had a stroke and needed someone to care for her, so Honda stepped in.

There was just one problem: Honda was not fluent in Japanese, and her mother-in-law didn’t speak English. Honda persevered and the women had a loving relationship.

“I took care of them until they passed away,” she said. “I loved them.”

Honda had always wanted to care for people, and dreamed of being a nurse.

“I wanted to go to nursing school before I got married but because of my Japanese descent I couldn’t get into a school,” she said. “So I gave up my dream of becoming a nurse and took care of my parents-in-law instead.”

Ada and Harry had three children, Marcia, Rhona, and Karla. Once the girls were in school and without her in-laws to care for, Honda went to work for Spokane School District 81.

“I worked with the orthopedic and neurologically handicapped children,” she said.

She helped teach preschool-aged children in special education with her years of taking care of her mother-in-law, despite their communication challenges, to guide her.

After 23 years teaching, Honda retired in 1985 and turned to volunteer work.

When Crosswalk teen shelter opened in 1985, Honda used her teaching experience to help.

“I love people, children,” she said. “I just enjoy helping those in need.”

Honda and her husband still made time for fun, she said. They would dance to the Glenn Miller and Lawrence Welk orchestras. They bowled for years and played golf. In the 1980s, they went to Japan for the first time.

Even after her husband’s death in 2001, Honda stayed active. She didn’t even hesitate to hop into a bounce house with her grandchildren at age 96, and fondly remembers catching the gold rings from the Looff Carrousel for the first time when she was 99.

When she wasn’t teaching, parenting, or playing, Honda was at Highland Park United Methodist. She helped start the annual Sukiyaki Dinner fundraisers the church was famous for.

They were two-day-long events with entertainment and food, serving over 1,000 people a night.

“I got to meet everyone,” Honda said. “There was hardly anyone in those days that I didn’t know.”

The predominantly Japanese-American church was a place for immigrants and people new to Spokane to feel at home. Often, Honda was the welcoming committee. Well into her 90s, she would visit her friends from church who were sick or in hospice and organize meal drop-offs and other help.

“Her whole life was always about giving and helping,” her daughter Karla said.

Not only was the church a place for community for Honda, but a place to practice her faith that got her through the ups and the downs in her life.

“I think the one thing that has gotten her through the good and the bad and the highs and the lows is her faith,” Karla Honda said. “That has really been the cornerstone to everything in her life, is her faith.”

Honda attributes living to 100 partially to genetics (her mother lived to be 104 and her older sister, Mary Benoit, is 102). But that’s only part of it.

“I think it’s my faith,” she said. “I don’t worry a whole lot. I always put my faith in the Lord.”