Although Hisayo Kawanabe, who died Dec. 8 at age 86 in Alamosa’s Evergreen Nursing Home, was born in the U.S. to Japanese immigrant parents, she remained Japanese at heart throughout her life in the San Luis Valley.
She was the second daughter born in Stockton, Calif., to farmers Eiichi Frank Yoshida and Isayo Kiyonga Yoshida. Between the ages of 5 and 18, she and her elder sister lived with her grandparents in a village near Hiroshima. At the time, Japanese immigrants routinely sent their children back to Japan to be educated.
She became so fluent in speaking and writing Japanese that it remained her first language even after she came back to the United States. She and her sister returned to find 10 brothers and sisters, most born in their absence.
Kawanabe had never before seen the San Luis Valley. Her family moved about the time they sent her to Japan, joining an influx of Japanese farmers recruited as sharecroppers.
It’s hard to imagine a more dramatic contrast than the difference between the austere spread of the windswept San Luis Valley and the lush southern Japan countryside where Kawanabe spent 13 formative years.
“My grandmother never talked about how she felt, but one relative told me that leaving Japan, basically being raised by other relatives, and coming to the U.S., she’d cry quite often,” said grandson Kenzo Kawanabe, a Denver lawyer.
“It was a difficult transition. One thing about my grandmother: She persevered. She retained a positive outlook on life, very ‘shogani.’ You’d translate that as, ‘It can’t be helped.’ A very Buddhist philosophy – bad things happen, and you move on.”
Kawanabe, who married La Jara farmer Thomas Sunao Kawanabe, was a devout Buddhist. Her father co-founded the San Luis Valley’s Buddhist community and was among the Buddhists who established the La Jara Buddhist temple that opened in 1937.
It was the first Buddhist temple in the area and the second in the state.
Throughout her life, Kawanabe maintained diaries, all written in kanji script, chronicling every year from her childhood in Japan to her senior years.
“It was all written in Japanese, and years ago, I thought I ought to sit down with her and write them down in English,” said daughter-in-law Bessie Konishi.
“Very few of us now can read Japanese. It’s one of those things you always regret.”
Survivors include sons Lawrence Kawanabe of Blanca and Albert Kawanabe of Edgewater; daughters Jane Wakasugi of Blanca and Phyllis Clarke of San Diego; sisters Kimiye Miyake of Aurora, Edith Nishikawa of Los Angeles, Grace Mizokami of Chandler, Ariz., Bessie Konishi of Alamosa, Marjorie Nakata of Brighton, Shirley Horiuchi of Westminster and Judy Yamakishi of Thornton; brothers Clarence Yoshida of Sun City, Ariz., and Gary Yoshida of Denver; eight grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.
Her husband, two sons and two sisters preceded her in death.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
