Yukiko Inui Ikeda

Yukiko Inui Ikeda

AGE: 95 • Somerset

Yukiko Inui Ikeda was born on December 13, 1917, in Price Utah. "Yuki" means snow in Japanese and she passed away on a snowy day, March 8, 2013, at the age of 95. Yuki grew up in Utah where the family owned a dry cleaning business. She moved to California where she finished school and junior college, graduating cum laude with an associate degree in accounting from Los Angeles City College.

In 1942, Yuki and her family, along with over 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry from the coastal areas of California, Oregon, and Washington, received a U.S government order to evacuate their homes in 6 days, bringing only what they could carry. Yuki and her family were sent to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, where she worked as a medical librarian and file clerk in the barbed-wire encampment. Gradually the family was allowed to leave as they found sponsors on the east coast. Yuki's brother was a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland, so with his sponsorship, she was allowed to leave on August 19, 1943.

Yuki eventually joined friends who found employment in Chicago. She married her then husband William Ikeda in 1943. During her life, she lived and worked in various parts of the country, eventually moving to New Jersey, where she lived in East Brunswick and finally in Somerset, NJ.

Yuki worked as a bookkeeper for most of her work life. In her spare time, she liked to sew and became the go-to person for hems or other alterations; she knitted baby blankets, baked cookie care packages, liked crafts, reading (always with her well-worn dictionary at her side), eating out, and never passed up a chance to travel. She kept in shape by tearing around corners at alarming speed on her 3-wheeled bike in her retirement village. And up until she died, her penmanship was exquisite.

Yuki was pre-deceased by her mother Taka Adachi and father Tazo Inui, two sisters Tsuta Takahashi and Taki Inui and by her brother and sister-in-law Frank and Beulah Inui. She is survived by her beloved daughter Linda and also by her extended family of loving nieces and nephews: Tom and Nancy Inui, Susan Inui and Don Ransom, Bliss and Peter Rand, Virginia Hotta and Mary Inouye, Lloyd and Tazuko Inui and all of their families, and the children of Harlan and Lin Takahashi.

There will be a small memorial service and celebration of Yuki's life on Tuesday, April 23, 2:30 PM, at the Mc Carrick Care Center, 15 Dellwood Lane, Somerset, NJ. Private arrangements were entrusted to the Crabiel Parkwest Funeral Chapel, 239 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ.