Gambling in Las Vegas and playing cards for money: that’s what 107 year-old Yuri Shoho loved to do in her spare time. The ‘Ele’ele woman, who passed away peacefully in her sleep on April 1, also loved to sew quilts
Gambling in Las Vegas and playing cards for money: that’s what 107 year-old Yuri Shoho loved to do in her spare time. The ‘Ele’ele woman, who passed away peacefully in her sleep on April 1, also loved to sew quilts for her children and grandchildren and tend her vegetable garden.
In fact, Shoho sewed a patchwork quilt for each of her children, 10 of 11 still surviving, every year until she was 95. She would collect scraps of fabric and start sewing in January so that each of her children could receive a quilt for Christmas, daughter Ann Yoshioka, 69, of Kailua, O’ahu, said.
Yoshioka says she didn’t know her mother’s secret of youth. Perhaps it was the way she always smiled, never complaining about anything. Maybe the yearly trips to Las Vegas kept her fun-loving spirit well. She decided to stop playing the slots after she fell during a trip at age 96, but still had fun at home playing sakura, a Japanese card game.
” ‘It’s no fun if you don’t play for keeps,'” Yoshioka recalled her mother saying.
Yoshioka remembered that their family ate a lot of vegetables from their own garden, and that her mother loved to eat sashimi and drink sake with dinner. Shoho’s late husband, Fusado Shoho, was a field overseer for Kauai Pineapple. Shoho also worked for the cannery as a trimmer.
The family used the company’s pickup truck until 1947, when they got their first car, a Chevrolet. Yoshioka said they didn’t have a refrigerator when she was growing up. “I wonder how they kept everything, meats and food,” she said.
Although Yuri didn’t speak much English, she loved to watch Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune on television every night, Yoshioka remembered.
Shoho lived in Kaua’i ever since she arrived as a 19-year-old Japanese picture bride. The last years of her life were spent at Hale Kupuna Heritage Home in Omao, where staff members said they’ve never taken care of a person as old as she.
In 1983, the entire family rented a bus and visited Disneyland and Las Vegas for two days as a family reunion. When Shoho turned 99, friends and family from the Mainland gathered in Kapahulu outside of Waikiki for a birthday party and dinner. To celebrate Shoho’s 107th birthday on February 25, friends and family on Kaua’i held a birthday party at the Hale Kupuna Heritage Home.
Shoho is survived by her sons Haruto, Russell, Reynold and Donald of California; and her daughters Hatsumi Nakagawara and Chizuko Shinseki of Kaua’i, Ann Yoshioka and Yoshino Tamaye of O’ahu, and Ethel Matsuda of Las Vegas. She is also survived by 23 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Her most prominent descendant is Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who grew up on Kaua’i and is now the chief of staff of the U.S. Army.
Staff Writer Kendyce Manguchei can be reached at kmanguchei@pulitzer.net
or 245-3681 (ext. 252).
