Fukui Mortuary Obituary for Shizuye Ishibashi (submitted 10.15.2014)
Shizuye Ishibashi (1914-2014), a centenarian, born in the East Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights crossed over to the spirit world to join ancestors waiting for her on the other side on September 18. While here she brought beauty to the world by her shodo (calligraphy), batik work, and her life.

Her children remember her working hard to help pay the bills as a waitress, domestic, garment and farm worker while raising four children with her husband. During World War II she, her husband and her three children were incarcerated in one of the U.S. camps for Japanese Americans, Rohwer, Arkansas. Post incarceration she worked in the migrant stream in Michigan before settling her family in Chicago where her husband trained as a chef. One of the many stories of her migrant worker experience was that she worked double shifts in order that her children not work in the fields but instead went to school because she valued education.

Another story revealed how she demanded respect for herself and her family. When the hospital workers in Chicago wrote "Jap" for her fourth child's identification, she insisted (with the support of her friends) that they change it to "Japanese American". Her courage resisting authority in order to ensure her children's safety and respect is one of many stories her children lovingly remember.

Among the other memorable moments are: Shizuye cooking gochiso (good food), pickling kyuri (cucumbers), making and washing their clothes, saving and counting her pennies, giving them baths in a tin tub, rubbing "mustard joy" on their chests to cure them of bad colds, scolding them for bad language and talking back to her, drinking a good beer or some wine, eating everything on her plate and more, laughing at a good joke, singing Japanese folk songs, reading the Rafu Shimpo, walking a mile to the senior meals center and a few blocks to church, putting tangerines on the family altar, catching a fly with her ohashi (chopsticks), watching baseball, and making origami creations as well as other arts and crafts.

She received accolades for her batik and shodo during her lifetime, and her children heap accolades on her for the beauty she brought into their lives with stories, art works, and sacrifices for them. She is survived by her children: Amy (Aki) Niwa , William (Priscilla) Ishibashi, Johnny Ishibashi, Jean (Albert Saldamando) Ishibashi; her grandchildren: Stephen Niwa, Katherine (Lawrence To) Ishibashi , Lauren (Jon) Ishibashi –Asaoka, and Shizu Saldamando; her great-grandchildren: Sage and Willow Ishibashi-To and Melanie Asaoka. We love you and know you are beside us surrounding us now with beauty as always. Kodomonotameni.



Here is a poem by her son Johnny in her memory:
Wishing you were somehow here again
Always in our hearts
100 years, passing the tears of joy and happiness
Boyle Heights; Santa Anita; Rohwer, Arkansas
You at the cast iron stove
Scrubbing clothes on wash boards
Thank you. Arigato.