LIHUE — Yoshiko Hayashi celebrated her 100th birthday Wednesday at Garden Isle Healthcare &Rehabilitation at Wilcox Medical Center.
“This is her real birthday,” said Marlan Nashiwa, Hayashi’s daughter, who flew in from Honolulu with her family. “She was born on May 15, 1919.”
Nashiwa and her brother Glenn Hayashi collected some of Yoshiko’s favorite foods for a special luncheon at the hospital, complete with a birthday cake.
“We can’t do any candles because of the oxygen,” Nashiwa said. “But we’re having cake, just with no candles.”
Yoshiko was born in Sacramento, Calif. She and her sister moved to Japan from California so they could get an education.
“The family was pretty well off,” David Nashiwa said. “Their father got a loan from an uncle to make the girls’ trip possible. Then, the Great Depression hit, and the family inherited a strawberry farm because the loan couldn’t be paid off.”
Because of the Depression, the girls once again made the trek from Japan to California.
“Imagine. At age 13, Yoshiko and her sister caught a steam ship from Japan to California to work on the strawberry farm,” David Nashiwa said. “Then came World War II, and the family was put into consolidation camps.”
Yoshiko and her sister came to visit another sister, Hatsuko Ihara, and they have been here since.
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Dennis Fujimoto, staff writer and photographer, can be reached at 245-0453 or dfujimoto@thegardenisland.com.
