My mother told me a story about her father. He had died after the war, after unjust imprisonment in Bismarck, North Dakota, and then later incarcerated in Gila Rivers, Arizona. They had all been rounded up because they looked Japanese, some were Japanese Americans. After they were released from the internment camps, he, his wife Yoshi, and their son Ben–who had sustained disabling injuries as an American soldier in France–settled on what is now known as Historic 25^th Street in Ogden, Utah. They ran a small mercantile and soda shop on that main street leading away from the Union railway station. 25^th Street became a mini Japantown, easy to navigate as it dead ends at the train station. They were active in the Buddhist church and when he died in 1952, there was a big funeral at the church. A photo of the entire congregation and my entire Montana family (without me, I wasn’t born yet) outside the church is evidence of his demise and his stature in the community.

Mom had significant angst about what to do with his ashes. This was the first close relative who had died. She felt an obligation to bury his ashes in Japan, in Hiroshima, where his family roots were, and where his family cemetery plot was.

But the problem was she lived in Hardin, Montana. She had followed her husband Tom to Montana to work in the sugar beet fields. They had started with virtually nothing, living in a Holly Sugar labor shack, then moving to larger houses as the family grew. Going to Japan was not an option. They had seven children under the age of 10 and were still struggling to establish themselves financially as well as in the community.

One afternoon, mom laid down in the room she shared with Tom and dozed. It was unusual, as she seldom napped. When she woke, her dad was in the doorway, not quite in the room, but not in the hallway. His voice reached her and he said, “I am ok. I don’t have to go to Japan. You can bury me here. I can rest here.” He released her from the burden of obligation she had felt in the months after he died.

Mom rose from the bed and felt a calmness and a certainty that she could bury her father in Hardin, Montana, thousands of miles from his birthplace, hundreds of miles from where he had spent most of his years in America.  

He could rest easy, and in peace.

So could she.