Strangers helped a Fresno man discover an aunt he did not know he had | Commentary

They often work behind the scenes, hidden and invisible. Their efforts can have great impact and change lives. A kindness and consciousness drives their spirit. All too often without recognition and acknowledgment. They are unsung heroes.

A team of unsung heroes changed my life and the meaning of family for me. Because of their resolve, our family was reunited with a “lost” aunt, separated from us for 70 years due to a mental disability and the traumatic World War II internment of Japanese Americans. For seven decades we had believed this aunt had passed, only to discover she was alive in Fresno, a few miles from our family farm.

It began with the voice of a woman, Ranee Johnson from Wild Rose Funeral home in Fresno. My aunt Shizuko, who was housed in a nursing home, had suffered a stroke and was believed to die soon. Ranee and the funeral home were given the task of burial and last rites for my aunt who, it was believed, had no family or close friends who needed to be contacted. Ranee did not want Shizuko to die alone, and set out on a quest to locate family. She searched the 1930 census and located my mom’s name, Shizuko’s sister, and combed through a network of other funeral homes and managed to locate my phone number and called me.

The news was jolting. I had to explore this tale firsthand to verify all the information. That’s how I learned of other unsung heroes, including many from the Central Valley Regional Center who helped manage the care for many disabled clients. Shizuko had been their longest and oldest client.

The saga of Shizuko began in 1925 when she contracted meningitis that damaged her brain; she suffered an intellectual disability at the age of 5. Our family did the best it could through the Great Depression — we were poor farm workers and like many, struggled to survive. Then, with the tragic uprooting of Japanese Americans because they “looked like the enemy,” my family was to be imprisoned in the Arizona desert for years. What do do with Shizuko? The choice was made to make her a “ward of the state” and forever separated. We thought.

I’m sure some of her care, from 1942 until our reunion in 2012, was not the best and at times difficult. But good people along the way did take care of her. From the information I could decipher, she was institutionalized for decades, possibly in Porterville, then in Camp Grant near Auburn in Northern California. She then returned to the Valley in the 1970s and organizations like the Central California Regional Center stepped in to provide care. We are grateful for that team of unsung heroes from those decades.

I first met Shizuko at what was then named Golden Cross Nursing Home in west Fresno. I learned a team of unsung heroes had cared for her for years; they had become family for my 90-year-old aunt. One of their team leaders, Tara Slocum, became the unsung hero for my aunt.

Tara and her staff had provided the care Shizuko needed as she aged and yet remained “feisty.” They nurtured my aunt’s spirit that kept her well and even thriving while she carried the baggage of a history that would have been too much for most. They toiled on without any of us, Shizuko’s biological family, there to acknowledge and share gratitude for their hours of care.

Tara showed a temperament of true caregivers: Caring is what motivates and drives them to labor on. The team at this facility, without recognition nor the compensation they deserve, took care of my aunt. Only with their years of care was our family allowed to reunite with a lost sister and aunt and help complete a tale of family stories and family secrets. Tara, my family will forever be grateful for your deeds.

Fittingly, when my aunt did pass away in 2014, Tara along with others offered a personal tribute and eulogy for her as our family tried to piece together a true tale of her resilience.

Unsung heroes are scattered throughout our Valley — in shadows of cities and small towns, tucked away in the mountain and farming communities. They may be in our own families and among our neighbors. They can work in facilities we drive by daily, everyday people doing extraordinary tasks. All quietly, silently and unnoticed. I salute and hope to honor them. I seek to elevate their stories and recognize their spirit, even if for a brief moment. They are unsung heroes. I thank you all.

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Unsung heroes helped me capture the saga of my “lost” aunt Shizuko in my latest book, “Secret Harvests, A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm.” This publication, along with artwork that helps tell this tale, will be part of Arthop on March 2 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Downtown Artist Gallery in Fresno.

David Masumoto is a farmer and writer living near Fresno.