My name is Ellyn Iwaoka. I am a Sansei living in Chicago. I come from a family who excel in math and science, while I am the maverick who chose a career in communications in the nonprofit sector. I’ve used my experience to write their obituaries and preserve their legacy, with some help from my brother, Dr. Robert S. Iwaoka—he wrote the Charlotte section of Mary Iwaoka’s obituary. The following are the obituaries we wrote to honor my family’s stories.
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Sam Isamu Iwaoka
Sam Isamu Iwaoka didn’t know what kind of future America would offer him as he spent his mid-20s in an internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming, during World War II. Ultimately, Mr. Iwaoka, 82, designed torpedo systems for the U.S. Navy and security systems for federal judges and U.S. senators, and he did other work requiring high-level security clearance. He died in Chicago in 1998.
“He didn’t have any bitterness or see any sense of irony in the situation,” said Mr. Iwaoka’s brother, John. “It was just a job opportunity.”
Mr. Iwaoka was born in Santa Rosa, California, to first-generation Japanese parents. Fearing prejudice against their children, they sent the two boys to live with family in Yamaguchi, Japan. Three years later, the boys returned to the United States but spoke no English. They enrolled in classes below their age level. They caught up.
Mr. Iwaoka graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and planned to pursue advanced studies in physics at the University of Michigan. Those plans vanished when World War II began, and Mr. Iwaoka and his family were sent to the internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming.
After WWII ended, the government gave the Iwaoka family $25.00 and a train ticket to move east. All of their possessions had been stolen from storage.
The Iwaoka family resettled in Chicago. Mr. Iwaoka married Mary Morimitsu. He was working as an electrical engineer in the physics department of the University of Chicago, advanced to working as an associate physicist at Armour Research Foundation at the Illinois Institute of Technology; as a project engineer at Chicago Nuclear Instrument Co., where he designed torpedo systems; and as an electrical engineer at a naval ammunition depot in Crane, Indiana.
He later worked for a branch of the U.S. Naval Ordnance plant in Oak Park, where he designed torpedo missile guidance systems. After his military work, Mr. Iwaoka became a systems engineer for the federal General Services Administration, where he installed security systems for judges and senators.
Mary remembers how her husband taught their three children to be clear and logical thinkers and passed along a love of learning by example. His main interests outside work were reading books about science or philosophy and studying the Japanese language.
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Mary Iwaoka
Mrs. Mary “Mimi” Iwaoka, age 98, passed away peacefully on April 30, 2016, surrounded by members of her family at the Presbyterian Hospital Harris Hospice Unit in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Mrs. Iwaoka was born in Sacramento, California, on January 5, 1918. She was a Nisei, a second-generation Japanese American. After the outbreak of World War II, her family was sent to the Tule Lake Internment Camp in Tule Lake, California.
When WWII ended, her family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where Mrs. Iwaoka met her future husband, Sam, and raised her three children. She attended Roosevelt University and then worked many years as a classified-ad taker for the Chicago Tribune newspaper and as a secretary for the School of Nursing at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Mrs. Iwaoka moved to Sharon Towers in Charlotte, North Carolina, in May of 2006 to be closer to her grandchildren. Mary enriched her children with her positive outlook, creativity, sense of humor, and belief in helping other people. She had a lifelong love of music and sang Bible hymns up to the day she died. “Mama-san,” as she was affectionately called by the staff at Sharon Towers, was a devoted member of the church choir of the Ravenswood Fellowship United Methodist Church in Chicago.
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Frank Morimitsu
Frank Kenichi Morimitsu was one of those rare boys who, even at a very young age, somehow mustered the courage and resilience to tackle huge obstacles. As a result, it was little surprise to family when he continually reached major milestones in his old age as well—living a remarkable 111 years.
Mr. Morimitsu died December 9, 1998, at Harmony Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Chicago. According to family and Japanese journalists who have traced his life, he was possibly the oldest person of Japanese ancestry living in the U.S.
A native of Hiroshima, Japan, Mr. Morimitsu came to America with his parents at age 11 to work in the cane fields of Hawaii. He fell in love with the country and decided to remain in a boarding school to learn English after his parents returned to Japan. “In a way, he reminds me of the character in Titanic (played by Leonardo DiCaprio). He was just very adventurous, with a lot of vitality, and he was fearless. From age 11 . . . he earned his own money and sent himself through school,” said his granddaughter, Ellyn Iwaoka.
Mr. Morimitsu sold candy and newspapers on trains in Honolulu to save enough money for his move to San Francisco at 17. In San Francisco, he continued his schooling while working as a houseboy for a family there, and then moved to the Sacramento area and married Ichiko Fujiwara.
In Sacramento, Mr. Morimitsu ran a family-owned restaurant, working as a chef while his wife was chief waitress. He also became a produce broker, shipping vegetables to the Eastern market, until World War II. At that time, Mr. Morimitsu, his wife, and five children were forced into an American detention center in Tule Lake, California.
While two of Mr. Morimitsu’s children served in the U.S. Army and in U.S. military intelligence during the war, the rest of his family moved to Chicago, where he became a chef for a downtown restaurant until he retired more than 40 years prior to his passing. Despite his family’s detention, Mr. Morimitsu was not bitter toward the U.S. government years later. Instead, he was extremely proud to become a U.S. citizen and to build a successful life here, his granddaughter said.
After his retirement, Mr. Morimitsu got deeply involved in the Devon Church of Jesus Christ in Chicago. He considered himself an evangelist and would make tapes of religious sermons and travel across the country to share them with family and friends.
Mr. Morimitsu eventually lost his eyesight to glaucoma and had trouble hearing, but even after turning 100, he was still well enough to travel by himself to Hawaii and New York with his tapes, said Rev. Kei Satoh, his church pastor.
“He was a very faithful person with an evangelistic spirit,” Satoh said.
Mr. Morimitsu credited his long life to “God, being a happy old man,” and “never eating anything that doesn’t taste good.”
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John Iwaoka
John (Jun) Iwaoka was born in Santa Rosa, California, and grew up in San Francisco with his parents, Naozo and Kiyo (Horita), older brother Sam, and younger sister Rose. His father owned a dry-cleaning business.
When he was a young boy, his father sent John and his brother, Sam, to live with his aunt in Yamaguchi, Japan. Fearing the rising trend of racism in the United States, Naozo Iwaoka wanted to ensure his sons could work in Japan if they were prohibited from working in the United States.
Sam and John were not accepted in Japan because they were considered foreigners. Japanese children ridiculed, taunted, and shunned them. After three years, Kiyo Iwaoka asked them to return to San Francisco because she missed her two sons.
John and Sam had an easier time reentering American society. They could not speak English, so they were enrolled in classes three grades below their actual age. Sam and John learned quickly and eventually were promoted to classes at their appropriate grade level.
John attended Polytechnic High School in San Francisco, which specialized in trades and vocational training. After graduation, he helped out in his father’s dry-cleaning store and worked with two Issei men to learn carpentry.
At the outbreak of World War II, John and his family were relocated to Heart Mountain Internment Camp in Wyoming. He came to Chicago after World War II and found a job building mobile homes on the South Side. John moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to work again with James Miyata, who taught him carpentry in San Francisco. John married James’s daughter, Janet. John bought a building with his brother Sam and sister Rose. John and Janet’s marriage ended in divorce.
In his personal life, John enjoyed golfing, fishing, making Japanese food, taiko performances, Japanese films, and Japanese American community events. He was very good at sketching and took art classes in figure studies. John rode his bicycle until he was in his eighties.
Although John did not have a formal education beyond high school, he placed a high value on education, was self-taught in many areas, and took pride in being an accomplished carpenter. He valued doing things well and with integrity.
In place of heirs, he established a trust fund for the Chicago JACL to set up scholarships to empower future generations of Japanese Americans to follow their dreams.
All photos are courtesy of Ellyn J. Iwaoka and Dr. Robert S. Iwaoka.
© 2025 Ellyn J. Iwaoka; Robert S. Iwaoka
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