Donald Yasuto Shirachi

1932 - 2023

Donald Yasuto Shirachi was born in Salinas, CA to George and Mickie Shirachi, and grew up in the agricultural community of nearby Watsonville. His grandfather, Masajiro, had left his home in southern Japan, went to work in Hawaii at a pineapple plantation and then went on to San Francisco and arrived in 1896. So Don was already a "sansei" - third generation - when WWII broke out, and he joined thousands of others of Japanese ancestry sent to "internment camps". In 1943 due to the labor shortage in the US, the Shirachi family and friends were contracted by the US government for agricultural leave to work on a farm in Glasgow, Montana. So the months of February to November (l943) were spent with the Cotton Family - the adults raising sugar beets and the kids living a mid-western life of herding dairy cows, raising chickens, growing Victory gardens, joining 4-H clubs, and making good friends. When the leave expired, most of the Shirachi family returned to camp (in Poston AZ); others went on to Minneapolis and Chicago. The return to camp was hard; George stayed in Utah to work to earn money for whatever future was ahead. When the war was over, the Shirachi family returned to Watsonville.
Don attended the local schools including Watsonville HS and a semester of Hartnell College in Salinas. He then joined the Navy and served as corpsman in San Diego, Oakland and was assigned later to the US Naval Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan where he remained until his discharge in 1955. He completed his work at Hartnell, went on to UOP (then known as COP) School of Pharmacy, continued on to graduate school at Purdue University in Indiana where he obtained his PhD. He did his post-graduate work at UCSF Medical Center before accepting a teaching position at UOP Pharmacy School where he taught from 1971 to 1993. He took a sabbatical leave in 1979 to establish a graduate program in Pharmacology at University of Fortaleza, Brazil. Post retirement he worked on hyperbarics with Mitch Hoggard in Chico, traveled to Sweden and Japan, and kept up his interest as an audiophile, and established a scholarship for Pharmacology graduate students in the name of his parents, George and Mickie Shirachi. He passed in Stockton on April 22nd.
He is survived by his two sisters Annette (Rikimaru) in Walnut Creek, Dale in Crofton, MD; two nephews Kelly in Walnut Creek and Scott in Monterey; one niece Dana in Denver; three Rikimaru grand nephews Jonathan in Portland, Matthew in Sunnyvale, Brian (Elisa) in Princeton NJ and one great grandniece Elena. His extended family will greatly miss him. There will be no formal service at this time.