Yayoi Tsukahara

Yayoi Cecilia Tsukahara

Yayoi passed away peacefully on June 29, 2013.

She was born Yayoi Inaba in Tokyo, Japan on leap day, February 29, 1920, though her official documents listed her birthday as March 1. Her father was an international merchant and an officer in the Japanese army, while her mother was a supervising nurse on a hospital ship. Yayoi was a bright, independent child, raised comfortably with her four brothers and sisters whom she loved dearly. As a young woman, she survived the horrific fire bombing of Tokyo during WWII that destroyed her family's home and took the lives of family members and friends. Shortly after the war, she was selected by the international student program established by Senator William Fulbright to come to the US and learn about democracy, and to return to help build her country's fledgling new government. Post war San Francisco was hostile. She was spat upon and cursed by her neighbors. She survived with courage and grit, earning her degree from San Francisco College for Women, later part of the University of San Francisco. She met and married a Japanese American man, Taro Tsukahara, but she had violated her visa, was arrested and jailed. Literally, an act of Congress, sponsored by Congressman Jack Shelley, allowed her to be released and to stay in the United States.

Yayoi loved American democracy and eventually became a citizen. She and Taro lovingly raised three sons in San Francisco. She later earned an advanced degree and spent many years on the Pathology service at the San Francisco VA Hospital helping care for sick and injured veterans. The family enjoyed camping and fishing trips in the Sierra Nevadas and on the Klamath River. She became an accomplished bowler, participating in leagues until she was 90 years old.

Yayoi was an independent, open minded and outspoken Japanese woman, with an iron will forged by her early challenges. She vigorously exercised her right of free speech, whether in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, in the anti-Vietnam war protests, in the fight for an ethnic studies program at San Francisco State College and in multiple other political and social campaigns. She participated passionately in the governance of Saint Francis Square, part of San Francisco's urban renewal, a cooperative apartment project originally sponsored by Taro's union and designed specifically for working class families of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds. She served for many years on the Board of Directors of the Buchanan St. YMCA in San Francisco's Western Addition.

Yayoi inspired her three sons and so many others with her remarkable inner strength and her generosity of spirit. She never put herself first. She was a spirited voice for hope and for social justice, particularly for those, like her, who struggled with barriers of language, race or culture.

She was pre-deceased by her husband, Taro Tsukahara. She is survived by three sons, Michael, John (Jessica) and Carl (Noelle) Tsukahara, and by four grandchildren Katharine, Gregory, Jared and Krysta Tsukahara.

Public viewing will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 6, followed by funeral services at 2 p.m. at McAvoy O'Hara Evergreen Mortuary in San Francisco