Hisano Fujimoto, 102, one of 60,000 surviving Japanese-Americans who were interned by the U.S. government in World War II, was among a small group invited to Washington in October 1990 to receive a check for $20,000 and a presidential apology for the internment.
Mrs. Fujimoto, a resident of Uptown, died Friday in a North Side nursing home.
”It was like jail,” Mrs. Fujimoto told a Tribune reporter in October, describing her time in an internment camp in Hunt, Idaho.
Mrs. Fujimoto, who was born in Japan, immigrated to the United States and settled in Seattle in 1908. She married three years later.
She and her late husband, Richard, owned a workingmen`s clothing store there in early 1942. Situated between two large logger employment agencies, it sold mainly loggers` clothing.
”After Pearl Harbor, our business actually almost doubled,” said her son, Frank. ”The loggers were concerned that we might be boycotted and they made a deliberate effort to patronize us. One of them handed me a note with his name and address on it. He told us he did not know where we would be sent, but that if we ever needed money, we should write him. Nobody hears about that kind of thing that people, especially the loggers who were mostly Scandinavian, did.”
The Fujimoto family lost their business and were ordered to report to a relocation center. After a year in the camp, she and her husband were allowed to join their son, who had settled in Evanston.
She used the check she received from the federal government to help a great-granddaughter go to college.
Survivors, besides her son, include two other sons, Benjamin and Dr. George; nine grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.
Services for Mrs. Fujimoto will be private.
