Yuko Saito (65) passed away peacefully in her home in Okemos on June 4, 2021, after suffering from pancreatic cancer, she was in home hospice. In Japan, she served as the Principal of Tsuchiura Second Elementary School for 3 years before her retirement, and moved to the United States in April of 2013 to join her husband, NSCL Professor Kenji Saito at Michigan State University.
She cultivated many diverse interests during her life in Michigan, including local birdwatching, cooking, gardening and playing piano. She loved travel in the US as well as abroad, sightseeing, and shopping in the US. She enjoyed participating in the ESL program (English as a Second Language) at Lansing Community College. Yuko was very compassionate, taking under her wing many, younger Japanese families, scholars and students new to Okemos, taking the role of a Japanese mother/grandmother in Michigan. She made many friends during the past eight years and is loved by many people and will be sorely missed.
Yuko was a very intelligent person. Every month, she reported on her life experiences in the United States as the Michigan Report, and sent it to many friends living in Japan and the United States. She included many topics in these reports such as differences in lifestyles between Japan and USA, differences in thinking, democracy, presidential election, COVID-19 pandemic, and so on. She created 98 reports, and these reports will be published as a book by the family in the near future.
In addition to her husband Kenji, Yuko is survived in Japan by her son Yosuke, daughter in-law Masako, daughter Aya, and her mother and father.
There will be a memorial visitation for Yuko at Gorsline Runciman Funeral Homes, East Chapel, 1730 E. Grand River Ave. in East Lansing on Tuesday, June 8 from 6pm until 8pm.
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