A Kind and Gentle Man

In the early summer of 1942, after a family moved to 203 Brownwood Avenue in Columbia City, a boy of about nine and his brother Harrison became neighbors of Shinzo Ohki and his family and did lawn mowing, yard work, snow shoveling, and wood stacking for local households, including the Ohkis. As the boy came to know Shinzo Ohki, his wife, and their daughter Grace, he remembered them as soft-spoken, gentle people who showed warm concern for others; Grace was in college, a talented musician, and a world-class clarinet player. During the early 1940s, as war heightened suspicion toward Japanese families, Shinzo Ohki, who always talked kindly with the boys and often overpaid them, one day paid them ten dollars each for work that usually brought about one dollar apiece and told them they could not work for him anymore because it would be bad for them and their family if they did. After the boys told their parents what he had said, they learned that people in their small town might cause them trouble for associating with a Japanese family, revealing that Shinzo Ohki had acted out of concern for the boys' welfare rather than his own, a memory that endured for nearly eighty years as proof that he was a kind and gentle man.

Columbia City, Indiana · United States