Today I participated in my first funeral service. I even had a small role. Ven. Kenjo Igarashi asked me to be the person who lights the candles on the altar and makes the first incense offering before the service begins.
The day before the service I helped set up tables and shade awnings where people could eat refreshments after the service and I helped put everything away at the end of the day.
The funeral was for a Toyoko Nakatogawa, who was a member of one of eight families that founded the church in the 1930s. She had been an active member of the church all of her life. More than 200 people attended her funeral service.
For those of you outside California, you may not be aware that in 1942 all of the Americans of Japanese descent were rounded up and sent to camps for the duration of World War II. Toyoko, who was born in Sacramento in 1924, was a Sacramento High School student in 1942. When her classmates graduated she was in a camp. While she eventually received a diploma from the school district, she never received a document saying she had graduated from Sacramento High School.
I can’t pass up recounting the story told by a Chinese gentleman who was a classmate of Toyoko. Before the Japanese were trucked Tule Lake, Californa, they were forced into a temporary camp outside of town. This Chinese gentlemen and several others went out to see their classmates in the camp outside town. Everything was fine until they attempted to go home. The guards wouldn’t let them leave. “We all look alike apparently,” he said.
He did get out and eventually Toyoko returned to Sacramento. Since the class had been unable to graduate together they would celebrate instead their graduation from middle school, which they’d all attended together. He was the last of those classmates at the funeral service today.