January 20, 1935 - July 27, 2020
Our dear mother, Ikuko Emoto, passed away peacefully on July 27, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. She lives on through her husband John of 57 years, three children and their spouses, four granddaughters, two grandsons, other family and many friends far and near. Ikuko was born on January 20, 1935 in Kurashiki city, Okayama prefecture in Japan.
Ikuko lived a full life, moving to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska in 1962 soon after marriage. Moving to the small fishing village of Sand Point was not the portrait of coming to America that she had imagined. Her husband John worked at the seafood processing plant as a maintenance worker. Ikuko’s focus in her new hometown was homemaking and raising her first two children, Casey and Yuki, who were born in Sand Point. For a short time, later in the mid-1960s, she and the family moved to Seattle where a third child, Tatsu, was born. The stay in Seattle did not last long though as Ikuko and family once again found themselves back in Sand Point working at the seafood processing plant.
Sand Point was home until 1994. Ikuko made sure that the family was active in the community. She was known by all in town for her cooking, sewing, arts and really anything that had to do with handiwork. Friends who were invited over to Ikuko’s for holidays and other occasions were treated to homemade Japanese food. She was single-handedly responsible for introducing Japanese cooking to the town. Dishes such as sukiyaki, shrimp and vegetable tempura, chicken teriyaki, and various sushi came to be well known. The Sand Point Women’s Club’s centennial cookbook in 1987 included Ikuko’s recipes. She even taught cooking classes at the school. She did this with happiness all from her heart, enjoying that she could share her love of Japanese food and culture with others.
Many of the seafood processing plants in Alaska were owned by Japanese companies and the one in Sand Point was no different. Imagine being sent to the Aleutians from Japan to oversee some part of the fish processing and finding a Japanese family! This doubling of the ethnic Japanese population of Sand Point was a happy occasion for both Ikuko and the Japanese strangers.
Ikuko was also a master crafter of antique Japanese dolls. If you are able to visit Sand Point you may be able to still find some of these dolls in people’s homes. She was certified for the making of these dolls through the Japanese Doll Association.
Ikuko made incredible life-long friends especially having lived in Sand Point where even today the population barely hits four digits and almost everyone knows everyone. After finishing her career working in quality control at the seafood processing plant, Ikuko worked for several years at the Aleutian Commercial Co., the main store in Sand Point where you could buy everything from food to clothing to guns to hydraulic fittings. Ikuko loved to visit and share stories. The store was the perfect place for her to work as it was one of the main centers of social activity. Casey and Yuki even had the opportunity to spend time working with her at the store and have many fond memories.
Ikuko, the daughter of Shigeru and Shikano Ono, was #4 of six siblings and is survived by her older brother, Masahiro, younger brother Yoshio and younger sister Kazuko who live in Japan and was preceded in death by older sisters Hideko and Teruko. Except for distant relatives that live in Hawaii and Brazil, Ikuko’s extensive Ono family all live in Japan. But she was very proud to have raised a family in America. Although the family is mostly west coast based, with Casey and wife Dorothy Emoto in Concord, California, Yuki and husband Chuck Kistler in Seattle, Tatsu and Diane Emoto in Gresham, Oregon, the family is starting to become a little less west coast based. Tatsu and Diane have daughter, Jessica, in medical school in Kansas. Casey and Dorothy have two children, Naomi and Ethan, attending college in Utah. Tatsu and Diane’s oldest daughter, Alyssa, having graduated with a degree in civil engineering married Jason Mah in 2019 and live in Bremerton, Washington. Yuki and Chuck’s daughter, Lianne, is a senior in high school. Casey and Dorothy’s younger son, Ryan, is a junior in high school. In her three children, Ikuko instilled honesty, hard work, to share and to be giving that has been passed onto her grandchildren and will be for generations to come. Ikuko will be laid to rest at Washington Memorial Park (also known as Bonney-Watson Cemetery) at 16445 International Boulevard in Seattle, Washington. In Ikuko’s memory, donations may be made to Providence ElderPlace, 4515 Martin Luther King Jr Way S, Suite 100, Seattle, Washington 98108 (
https://washington.providence.org or
https://washington.providence.org/donate/hospice-of-seattle-foundation/ways-to-give/give-now)
