When Shane Sato sat down to photograph Yoshio Nakamura, the World War II veteran, renowned artist and beloved educator was 92.
“I really liked his face, he seemed kind, with a lot of emotion and depth,” Sato said. “So I took his portrait with his eyes closed trying to let that spirit shine through.”
The resulting photo was published in Sato’s book, “The Go for Broke Spirit” in 2017. Since then, Sato, of Los Angeles, has grown to stand in awe of how many lives Nakamura has touched.
“He has a great way of relating to people, a friend to so many,” Sato said in July.
Nakamura, whom Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn called “a one-of-a-kind American hero,” died on Saturday, Nov. 22.
He was 100 years old.
Hahn said she plans to adjourn next week’s meeting of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in Nakamura’s memory.
“Through some of the darkest moments in our nation’s history and in the face of fear and discrimination, Yosh chose love and service,” Hahn said. “I had the honor of throwing a 100th birthday celebration for him in June, and it’s clear that though he may no longer be with us, he leaves behind an extraordinary legacy and countless admirers. My thoughts are with his loved ones.”
Nakamura was born in Rosemead and grew up in El Monte. During the wartime hysteria following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Nakamura recalled his American History teacher at El Monte High reassuring him he was protected as an American citizen under the Constitution. He, and about 120,000 other Japanese and Japanese Americans, soon found out they were not.
Nakamura was 16 when he and his family were forced to report to the Gila River Camp in the Arizona desert. From what he would later call a concentration camp, Nakamura enlisted in the Army at 19, working as a mortar specialist with the legendary 442nd Regimental Combat Team of “Go for Broke!” fame, considered the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in U.S. military history.
After the war, he earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in fine arts from USC, teaching first at Whittier High School in 1952, then signing on as the first faculty hired for the new Rio Hondo College in 1963. Nakamura taught there for 29 years.
In retirement, he and his fellow artist wife Grace Shinoda Nakamura grew their community activism for their favorite causes: fairness for everyone, education and the environment.
Former Whittier mayor Allan Zolnekoff met the Nakamuras in 1992, when they joined forces to save 3,885 acres of the Whittier Hills and install bike paths in the city.
“Yosh and Grace were two sides of the same coin,” Zolnekoff said. “Both started life as typical American kids but then were rounded up and lived in internment camps for some years during World War II.”
The experience didn’t embitter either of them. Zolnekoff said Nakamura clearly remembers how American troops tore his dog away from him in the roundup of Japanese Americans during the war.
“I asked Yosh several times how he went on to a highly accomplished life without any bitterness after all of this trauma,” Zolnekoff said. “He said he had some of his friends from the camps commit suicide. He saw his reaction as a decision that he had to make. He did not fall into victimhood — although the facts would support that. How many of us could do that? I am not sure I could. That is why he will always be my hero.”
Zolnekoff said Nakamura was so humble and wielded such a dry sense of humor it dehydrated.
“If asked about his limited hearing ability, he would give people his standard casual comment about how firing huge cannons at Nazis in World War II could cause some deafness if you were near them,” Zolnekoff said.
Reminiscing about his storied post-war life as an artist and art teacher, Nakamura simply said administrators probably kept him on “after they discovered students didn’t run away from my classroom.”
Among his students is Academy Award-winning visual effects artist Lorne Peterson, known for his work on “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” Peterson helped mount an exhibit in tribute to his teacher at the Whittier Art Association Gallery in 2017.
Yosh and Grace, married for 67 years until her death in 2017, were a “beautiful package, dedicated to each other,” said the Rev. Loletta Barrett of First Friends Church in Whittier in July. Both showed “how to be a person of respect and dignity.”
Among Nakamura’s awards and accomplishments: earning Whittier’s first Teacher of the Year award in 1960, the Congressional Gold Medal in 2011, the Bronze Star, and the French Foreign Legion medal in 2017. His paintings and etchings are in the Guggenheim Collection in New York and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He and Grace were awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Whittier Area Audubon Society.
The fine arts building at Whittier High School and a part of the Whittier Art Gallery are named in his honor.
Known to family as “Papa Yosh,” Nakamura is survived by his three children, Linda, Daniel and Joel, their spouses and grandchildren. Funeral services are pending.