Eric Clifford Yatabe

[From Eric's Family - We are touched by the condolences and support received from those who knew Eric, and we encourage you to provide your memories and photos of Eric through Legacy.com. We are not planning a large immediate memorial for Eric but intend to have smaller gatherings over time in places and with people Eric held dear. Please share the news of Eric's passing with others that may have known him. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the Hawaiian Humane Society, hawaiianhumane.org, where Eric adopted Dot.]

Eric Clifford Yatabe was born to Margaret and Jon Yatabe in Richland, Washington on a warm summer day in June 1966. Richland was a small town in arid Eastern Washington by the Columbia River. He enjoyed fishing, swimming, skateboarding, playing basketball and running track, bike riding, lifting weights, playing Dungeons and Dragons, reading, and spending time with friends and family. He made lifelong friends during his time in Richland and included his younger brother Brad in his group of friends. Eric and his family frequently went on road trips with a favorite destination being the rugged Oregon coast. Memorably, Mount Saint Helens erupted in 1980 covering Richland in volcanic ash.

A high school highlight was winning the American Nuclear Society essay contest which gave him a summer job at the Hanford research facilities. He graduated from Hanford High School in 1984, and his love of Hawaii began when his great aunt took Eric and his brother to visit family on Oahu and the Big Island as a graduation present. Eric went on to attend the University of Washington and graduated in 1989 with his Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering, and Eric made lifelong friends with fellow engineering students. Eric was a lifelong Huskies football fan, and he cheered on the Huskies to victory at the 2024 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.

After graduating from university, Eric moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to work at the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond. He was at the refinery when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area in 1989 and assisted with the emergency shut down. Eric later transferred to Oahu with Chevron and began the first of numerous stays in Hawaii throughout his life.

In 1996, Eric took a break from engineering and moved from Hawaii to Hokkaido, Japan to work as an English teacher with the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program. In 1997, Eric's mother passed away suddenly, and he and his brother returned home to mourn with their family. Eric returned to Oahu later that year and started a two-man engineering firm with a friend and a side business recycling scrap tires and catalytic converters.

In 1998, Eric began working for OHM as the Transportation and Disposal Coordinator responsible for disposing of hazardous and non-hazardous materials, principally on Wake Island. This began a more than twenty year stretch of work that took Eric to numerous locations throughout the world including Wake Island, Guam, Diego Garcia, Kwajalein, Saipan, Korea, Japan, Greenland, Hawaii, Texas, California, and Colorado. Throughout his career, he stayed in many different apartments, houses, hotels, and with friends and family, always with his signature giant suitcases.

In 2000, Eric became a project engineer on military fuels infrastructure contracts ranging from rail systems to tactical fueling facilities principally in Korea, Guam, and Hawaii until 2008. He continued to focus on fuel related projects in various roles with several companies through various acquisitions and rebranding including OHM, International Technology, Shaw, CB&I, and ultimately APTIM. Eric's succeeded in his work and was a go to for employers and clients for particularly difficult projects in remote places. He was highly valued for his resourcefulness, tenacity, engineering and leadership abilities, sheer hard work, and respect, caring, and support for his colleagues.

During his life, Eric had some significant health scares and issues including lifesaving surgery overseas to repair a ruptured diaphragm and a twisted stomach resulting from a prior car accident. In 2010, a lifesaving medical evacuation from Diego Garcia to Singapore for heat stroke occurred. Eric believed that event was caused by heavy metal poisoning connected to his work, and he spent 18 months going through chelation and at one point weighed 115 lbs. and was too weak to get out of bed and spent a year living with his father and stepmother in Bodega Bay, California, recuperating. He worked incredibly hard to maintain his health after that but had a number of setbacks over the years that he fought through.

During the pandemic, Eric adopted a dog from the Oahu animal shelter. She was afraid of people, likely due to abuse, and Eric sat patiently at the shelter for hours until she approached him. He saved her life because few if anyone would have made such an effort to connect. Eric and Dot were inseparable companions at work and at home in many locations for years. Dot currently lives with a loving family in Colorado.

In 2021, Eric organized a trip to Alaska along with his brother, Dad, and stepmom to visit friends and go salmon fishing. Eric loved Alaska and would later make a motorcycle trip with friends from Colorado to Alaska in 2023 and another visit with his brother, Dad, and old friends to go salmon and halibut fishing.

In 2022, Eric retired from APTIM and moved to Las Vegas with Dot where he enjoyed his time riding his motorcycle, playing Texas Holdem, working out, hosting friends and family, attending Raider football games, training in Krav Maga, rock climbing, singing karaoke, reading, and going to concerts. Eric lived in a home where his grandmother, great aunt, and two great uncles had lived, and Eric had visited frequently.

As shown by his tattoos, Eric was a lifelong Raiders fan throughout their various moves from Oakland to Los Angeles to Oakland and finally Las Vegas. He bought a truck to haul his motorcycle trailer and spent time visiting friends and family in various places, including frequent visits to see his dad, stepmom, and brother and his family in Fort Collins, Colorado, where Eric spent the summer in 2023. During that summer, Eric made the pilgrimage with friends to the Telluride Blues and Brews Festival where the highlight was seeing Bonnie Raitt sing one of his favorite songs, her version of Angel from Montgomery. Eric discovered Angel's Envy Kentucky bourbon which became his favorite. Eric organized an ongoing game of Dungeons and Dragons with his childhood friends and brother who had played it with him as kids, and with his nephews and one of his nieces to introduce them to the game.

Though "retired," Eric took on some short stints of work with APTIM in Hawaii. Eric was interested throughout his working life in entrepreneurial opportunities including tire and catalytic converter recycling, exploring various restaurant opportunities, and looking into opening a bowling alley in Colorado with friends. In 2024, he started a construction business with friends in Emerald Isle, North Carolina. In August, Eric moved back to Oahu to continue working for APTIM to pad his nest egg before intending to retire again. Eric visited his family in Colorado over the holidays and his four nieces and nephews were overjoyed to spend time with "Uncle E."

On April 28, 2025, Eric passed away in Aiea, Hawaii, overcome by profound and devastating depression that he could not escape and had never experienced. His brother Brad was with him during his final days.

Eric is survived by his father, Jon, his stepmother, Carol, his younger brother, Brad and Brad's wife Rachel, and their four children, Raven, Phoenix, Fox, and Pele.

Eric's family, friends, and co-workers knew Eric as fun loving, adventurous, joyful, energetic, full of laughter and smiles, generous, caring, curious, strong, mischievous, stubborn, and the hardest working and most focused person imaginable. Eric loved his family and friends and valued his drive and ability to rise to any challenge and fight hard to achieve his goals.

To his family, Eric was a devoted and loving son who took the time to take his dad on father-son trips in recent years including to Alaska, Oregon, New York, and Washington D.C. He was a devoted and loving brother, and they considered each other as best friends who were always there for each other and proud of each other's lives. He was a devoted and loving uncle who loved to be a big kid and to spoil his nieces and nephews and take them on adventures.

To his friends, Eric was a devoted and loving friend who maintained lifelong friendships with friends from all stages of his life. Many friends considered him as close as family and Eric relished the opportunity to get to know their partners and kids. His friends admired him for being genuine, supportive, and for bringing out the best in them. His adventurous spirit motivated them to have new experiences.

To his co-workers, Eric set the bar for work ethic for each team he was a part of and excelled in taking on difficult and remote work with multiple alternative plans at the ready. He had a brilliant engineering mind and worked tirelessly to solve problems through innovation and finding a better way. He was a dedicated team member who enthusiastically mentored junior engineers, was selfless and concerned with the well-being of his team wherever he was, and acknowledged, appreciated, and praised everyone's contributions to getting the job done. He became true friends with many co-workers and was also willing to help his friends in any way possible. He was truly Enthusiastic Rare Innovator Caring.

The world is a much poorer place without Eric, and we are heartbroken. While Eric's life was tragically cut short, his 58 years were well lived and filled with love, laughter, and adventure. More than anyone, Eric would wish all of us joyous, strong, adventurous, long, and happy lives. Although he is gone, his caring, joy, generosity, and adventurous spirit were gifts to each of us that we carry in our hearts and will continue to nourish us in our journeys.

Credo, attributed to Jack London (author of one of Eric's favorite stories, To Build a Fire):

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.

I shall use my time.

Song of Myself, Section 52, Walt Whitman:

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.