A funeral service for Yaeko Mochizuki, 86 years old, resident of North Hills who passed away on February 9, was held at Ivy Lawn Park Cemetery, Ventura on March 3, officiated by Rimban Briones of Los Angeles Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, and she was buried after the service.

Yaeko was preceded in death by her husband, Kiyoshi Mochizuki.

She is survived by her sons, David (Susan) and Robert (Masayo) Mochizuki: grandchildren, Dylan and Kate; her brothers, Haruto and Isamu Takata. She is also survived by many nieces and nephews.

Yaeko Mochizuki was born in Torrance, CA on 8/8, 1936 as the 8 ^th child of 8 children who lived well into her 8th decade. Her kanji name for "Ya" in Ya-e-ko is the character for the number 8.

Her family were strawberry farmers in Redondo Beach. She never really knew her father who died in 1938 before she was 2 years old. In 1940, when she was 4 years old, Yaeko's mom took her and her brother Sam to Japan for their first time. The boat took 2 weeks to get to Japan at the time.

When Yaeko was back in the US when she was  5 years old, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The following spring, her family was uprooted and sent to an internment camp in Rowher, Arkansas under Executive Order 9066. They spent a year in Rowher before being transferred to Tule Lake for the final 2 years of the war. Due to the injustices of the Japanese internment, her brother Kay renounced his U.S. citizenship and Yaeko's mother took her and her brothers Kay, Minoru, and Sam back to Japan after the war. In Japan, they stayed with the Takata and Harada families in Hiroshima Prefecture until they returned to the U.S. when Yaeko was in High School.

Upon returning to the U.S. in 1954 at 18 years of age, Yaeko attended and graduated from San Fernando High School which was the same school that her future husband Kiyo attended. However, they never met while in High School. Yaeko finally met Kiyo at her brother Sam's wedding to Yuki in 1960. She was a bridesmaid and he was a groomsman and they were paired with each other in the wedding ceremony. In 1965, Kiyo took a trip to Europe and got his immunizations at the medical office where Yaeko worked. He sent her a postcard from London and they started dating shortly after that. They were married in 1966 and were married for 50 years when Kiyo passed away in 2016.

Family and friends were always Yaeko's top priority. She was caring, kind, generous and selfless almost to a fault. She sacrificed any possibility of a career to raise David and Bob and was the one who took them to school and to all of their appointments and extracurricular activities. She enjoyed the company of longtime friends and always looked forward to trips with them to Las Vegas where she would spend hours playing penny slot machines in Downtown. After Kiyo retired, the same group of friends also traveled to Europe and took a Mississippi River cruise.

She drove to the Bay Area with Kiyo countless times for all of her grandchildren's milestones – births, birthdays, graduations, as well as their baseball, soccer, and basketball games. But it wasn't just her grandkids she cared for, her love extended to Susan's siblings' kids where she remembered everyone's birthdays by sending a card and got everyone holiday gifts every year. Yaeko was an avid and skilled crafter. She could sew, quilt, knit and needle point. She spent many shopping trips finding fabric for the kids pillow cases and blankets, yarn to make scarves or items to support veterans and preemies through her Quilting Guild.

Yaeko discovered she had Stage one Breast Cancer in 2009. She became close friends with the women with whom she rode the shuttle to her treatments. They became known as the "Radiators" and continued to gather for monthly luncheons to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries of being survivors. She also attended the San Fernando Japanese Community Center for their senior programs and took part in exercise and arts and crafts classes.