On the first day of spring in 1927, Rose Osaki was born in a farmhouse in Talbert, CA. Her father, Kyutaro Ishii, had settled there in 1906, married Sada Nakamura in 1912 and then raised a family there. They had 5 children: Joe (1914), Charles or Chuck (1916), Nellie (1919) and Don (1924 who died shortly afterwards) and then Rose. When she was born, she quickly became the little "rose" of my grandfather's life. She loved her place in a family where 3 older siblings took turns for the rest of their lives in protecting and making sure she was doing ok. Between her father and Joe, she tagged along wherever they went. A happy child, she talked a lot about how life then was without worry.

Growing up, there were amusing moments such as when the Long Beach earthquake of 1933 hit and how Nellie and Chuck went crashing out the front door at the same time, and once everyone was safe sitting in the car outside, Baa-cyan asked "Where's Rose?" and then realizing she was still in the house sleeping, she made Chuck go back into the house and get her. Because Joe was already driving, he often picked her up at school and on occasion, he would tell Rose to ask Mama for some ice cream money knowing that Mama almost never turned Rose down and then they would stop to pick up an ice cream cone for both of them on the way home.

When WWII broke out, her family was evacuated to the camp in Poston AZ, that is, everyone except Rose who had come down with measles and was hospitalized for 3 weeks in Santa Ana. One of the Wardlow's, Eleanor, a childhood friend, would visit but for Rose who had never been apart from her family, she cried everyday until she was able to rejoin them at the camp.

In late 1943, when the government started to allow internees to move out of the camp, the Ishii's took advantage of the opportunity and moved to Colorado to resume farming. Fortunately, they move to the Greeley area which is where my father was living. As she started at Gil High School as a junior, she met Mary Ogata and became close friends. Mary's family was one of  many Japanese in the area that had formed a close community over the decades. It was Mary who introduced her to Kenneth Osaki. Love at first sight? I never got a straight answer but I remember my dad saying 'I always knew she was madly in love with me". I asked him how did he know? And then he would deliver his punch line "its because I was so good looking".  That was my dad.

When the war ended and the Japanese were allowed to return to California in 1946, the family went back but Rose stayed. She had graduated as High School Valedictorian and decided to attend college in Denver where she lived for a short time. However, it was not long before she missed her family and moved back to California herself. My dad soon followed her to California to propose marriage. With his brother in law Noboru Tomiyama as the "go between", a marriage was arranged in the  traditional manner but it was more apt to say that they loved each other so much and did so for the next 55 years. They married on April 26, 1947 in Denver and settled in the Greeley area where they had a small farm.  Linda Sheryl Osaki was born in February 1948 and son, Kerry G. Osaki, was born in 1953.

In those days, it was a very special time. Many of their friends in that area had grown up together. Now, they were getting married and having children.  There were baseball games on   every Sunday when all of the young men would play, and their wives, the children and the issei would come out to watch. They helped each other during the harvest and the terrible winter of 1949, attended church, played cards and bowled, and weathered the usual calamities that happened in a small farm community. But all good things come to an end and by the mid-1950's, the inability to make a living as a small farmer started an exodus to other states. In February 1957, Rose and Ken moved the family to California. They first settled in Costa Mesa as Rose took on her first non-farming job at Bullock's in Santa Ana but later moved to Fountain Valley to a new home that sat on the same land (on Bushard) where her family once farmed. The family had sold the farm to the developers and houses were going up all over.

In Orange County, there was a large japanese community whom Rose had grown up with years before. They quickly became involved in the Nisei life (bowling, socializing at OCBC and Wintersburg). By 1969, Rose accepted a position at the Kono Hawaii Restaurant heading up their  accounting department.  It was during the 1970's that Rose's life started to change. To describe Kono Hawaii, it was a large restaurant with a Vegas-Style showroom and was one of the few (and certainly the largest) Hawaiian restaurant in Southern California. It was an exhilarating time  especially when the Society of Seven appeared on stage. 3 shows per night on the weekends, and on the best nights drawing close to 800 persons per show. You probably did not notice it at first but as her role expanded to general manager and part owner, in talking to customers, giving interviews to The Orange County Register, running a large staff, dealing with employees, etc. Rose blossomed into this gracious, outgoing and extroverted  personality that none of us had ever seen before.

By 1986, as the result of the recession that had started in the early '80's, the owners of Kono Hawaii decided to close the restaurant. From there, Rose felt too young to retire so she started working part time at the nearby Union Bank but finally had some extra time for herself. She continued to bowl but also took the time to travel with Ken and her friends to various indian casinos, Las Vegas, Hawaii and to an endless number of bowling tournaments all over the country. Those were fun years for her. When they were not traveling, then this group of about

15-20 women would be having breakfast, lunch or dinner together. This period also marked the arrival of her four (4) grandchildren, Christopher and Kelly Clapp, and then Meaghan and Kevin Osaki, who became a source of continuous joy, someone to think about when buying gifts and allowed Rose to enjoy a new role as grandma where she fascinated and perplexed them with her penchant to refer to all people as "you know, hoshiko" when she could not remember their names.

In 1997, her beloved daughter Linda passed away and in 2002, the great love of her life, Ken,  passed away. By 2011, with arthritis swelling her hands, she could no longer bowl and had to drop out for good. By then, her siblings had all passed away and most of her friends were no longer with us. The last few years were difficult as dementia took hold, she broke her hip in 2019 and then during the pandemic, she passed away on September 6, 2020 from Covid-19.

In thinking about my mom over our time together, I find myself grateful for so many different things that have happened including the honest good fortune to have Rose Osaki as my mom. For me, she was the perfect and greatest mom for what I needed. As I careened through college with long hair and  marching around during the protests wearing my moccasins, she was the one constant in my life. Scratching her head perhaps but always helping me along the way ("Well, I guess you know what you're doing." she would say) especially later as I started to straighten out, move on to law school and started the business that I now retire from. We were close and she was there for me. She was warm, gracious, a little shy but a happy and a good natured person. My mom does not have to be idealized beyond what she was in life as she can be remembered as a good person who seemed to always do the right thing. If there is any regret that I feel now, it is that at the end, she deserved much more than to be alone in a covid hospital bed and if I had a million bucks, I'd give it up in a heartbeat to just hold her hand one last time.