Judith Michie Yamauchi

July 15, 1938 – June 12, 2022

Judith Michie (Sakurai) Yamauchi was born July 15, 1938 in Portland, Oregon at Emanuel Hospital, the last of six children by Chiyoko and Masaru Sakurai. Since her mother was induced one month early so that the doctor could go on vacation, Judy was quite small (5 lbs.) and slept most of her first year. When she was three years old, she and her family were sent to the Portland Assembly Center (Pacific International Livestock Exposition Pavilion) to be kept there until the permanent concentration camps could be set up in south-central Idaho. She spent ages 4 to 6 at the Minidoka Relocation Center in Hunt, Idaho.

After World War II was over, she and her family went back to Troutdale, Oregon to the family farm; but, due to prejudicial words and comments indicating that they weren’t welcome there, decided to leave and sold the land. Judy’s father started work as a landscape gardener and moved into the only place which would accept hers and many other Japanese-American families in Portland — the Federal Public Housing Administration’s Vanport (the country’s largest public housing project). After the 1948 Vanport Flood, the entire housing project was destroyed in less than a day and more than 18,000 residents were displaced. After her family was flooded out of Vanport, they lived for a while in Fairview, and then in downtown Portland on 1st and Sherman St. where she attended Lincoln High School.

Judy attended Reed College, majoring in organic chemistry under Dr. Cronyn, and went to graduate school at the University of Oregon. At the U of O, she was recruited by Shell Development Corporation in Emeryville, California to work as a chemist in the patent section doing international literature searches because of her language abilities in German and French. Shortly thereafter she was sent by Shell to go back to graduate school at Stanford University to learn the Japanese language.

Hiroshi Yamauchi (originally from Maui, Hawaii) was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, working for the competing Ortho Chemical Company when he met and married Judy. After earning his PhD at UC Berkeley, he accepted a position at the University of Hawaii Manoa and he and Judy moved to Hawaii. Hiroshi remained a professor of Natural Resource Conservation Economics at the UH until his retirement 30 years later.

Hiroshi and Judy had one child, a daughter, Kara Mie, who was born in Honolulu. For a time, Judy was a stay-at-home mom. After her daughter was in school, Judy went to work as the Director of the Japan-America Society of Hawaii until the family went to Japan for Hiroshi’s two Fulbright Fellowships, at Kyoto University and at Tokyo University. While in Japan, she worked for Suntory in Akasaka-Mitsuke, Tokyo. After they returned to Honolulu, Judy worked at the Japanese Consulate as a speechwriter for the Consul General for many years. She and Hiroshi eventually left Hawaii to relocate back to Portland to help their daughter care for their granddaughter, Nicole.

Judy had a lifelong interest in the fine arts, particularly in drawing and lithography, and studied at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Bishop Museum, and the University of Hawaii. She painted portraits via commission to earn extra spending money while she was in Honolulu. She studied calligraphy for 15 years, in Portland, under Fujii sensei, working mainly on painting and illustration of the more than 500 haiku poems written by her late mother that had been published throughout the course of 50 years in the Japanese literary magazine, Hototogisu. She was in the process of organizing these works.

To keep herself busy during the pandemic, she took it upon herself, every Friday for more than a year, to make and deliver Japanese bentos to more than 15 shut-ins in five different retirement homes. In addition, she enjoyed doing volunteer work and was involved in many volunteer projects throughout her retirement years.

A memorial service for Judith will be held Wednesday, July 6, 2022 from 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM at Bateman Carroll Funeral Home, 520 W Powell Blvd, Gresham, OR 97030.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.batemancarrollfunerals.com for the Yamauchi family.