Tomonoshin Yoshimoto

Tomonoshin Yoshimoto was born on Dec. 4, 1880 to Torakichi and Michi (Okida) Yoshimoto in Saga-mura, Kumage-gun, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. He immigrated into Honolulu on Jan. 18, 1903. He apparently had gone to Hawaii as a contract laborer. He returned to Japan and later sailed to Victoria, Canada in January 1907. In February 1907 he arrived in San Francisco.

Tomonoshin worked and lived in the Los Angeles area until 1912. Tomonoshin married Mika Isobe (b. Dec. 5, 1891), also of Saga, in 1911. Mika arrived in San Francisco aboard the Tenyo Maru in August 1911. Her purpose as stated in the manifest was to join her husband. However, since he apparently did not accompany her, they may have actually married upon her arrival in California. After their marriage he worked on a large 300 acre ranch in Monterey. In 1915 he returned to Los Angeles and in 1917 started farming in Portuguese Bend.

From 1915 to 1920 three children were born: daughters Harue (5/8/1915) and Fumiko (1/31/1918), and son Kazuo (7/28/1919). A second son, Haruo (Henry), was born on 3/21/1929.

In his 1918 WWI draft registration, Tomonoshin reported that he was a truck farmer living in Portuguese Bend with Mika and their daughters. By 1930 he had a home (Ranch 18) on the Palos Verdes Highway south of the Vanderlip Estate above Abalone Cove. In 1940 he reported that he was farming for his neighbor, Masaichi Ishibashi, who lived at Ranch 19.

In 1940 the farmers revised many documents to name the Nisei sons who were citizens as farmland lessees or board members of the Growers Association. In 1940 Tomonoshin held a lease for Ranch 12 above Portuguese Bend. His son, Kazuo, held the leases on Ranch 18, and Ranches 12, 14, and 16 lying farther northwest above Abalone Cove.

In Dec. 1941 Tomonoshin ceased employment by Ishibashi and began farming for his son, Kazuo. However, he was arrested in February 1942 and, after a short time in the Terminal Island jail, he was transferred to the Tuna Canyon Detention Camp in Tujunga, CA. The FBI warrant stated that he possessed “flashlights, searchlights and 5 rounds of 22-caliber ammunition”. A month later he was sent to Ft. Lincoln in Bismarck, North Dakota until July 1942 when he was paroled to Poston, Arizona. There he joined his wife and sons who had moved to Strathmore, CA before being sent to Poston.

Harue married Kenneth Goka in 1938 and lived in Los Angeles. The Goka family was sent to Manzanar but later joined Tomonoshin and Mika in Poston. In 1943 they were released to Chicago. They returned to Los Angeles for a few years but the 1950 Federal Census found them in Houston, Texas where the family stayed.

Fumiko married Richard Takeshita in 1940 and lived on Crocker Street in Los Angeles. Fumiko’s family was sent to Heart Mountain and released in 1944 to Chicago. After the war, Tomonoshin and Mika moved to the Truman-Boyd Manor (public housing) in Long Beach, CA with Kazuo and his wife, Misao. By 1950 the young couple had 2 sons, William and Kay. Kazuo was a landscape gardener and Tomonoshin had retired. Richard and Fumiko Takeshita lived next door with a young son. Richard was also a gardener.

Henry Haruo returned to California with his family but, soon after, moved to a private home in West Los Angeles where he was a servant for an elderly woman. He attended University High School and UCLA. Henry married Mary Mitsuko Ishida in 1953. He probably met Mary while she attended the Mount Saint Mary College nursing school. The parents and sons are buried in Green Hills Cemetery, San Pedro, CA.

Tomonoshin died 7/20/1957 followed by Mika on 6/01/1966. Henry Haruo died 10/25/2023* and Kazuo on 7/22/2002. Fumiko died in 2009. Harue, who had adopted the name Harriet, died in 2010.

In the Forty Family Photograph the Yoshimoto family members are numbered as follows: Tomonoshin #7, Mika #82, Kazuo #153, and Haruye #162. *From the Takeshita family tree on Ancestry.com.