Biography:
Toru “Tom” Ino was born on July 29, 1917, in Los Angeles to parents Sakamatsu and Kaneo Ino. He was the oldest of four children. His mother, Kaneo, died after childbirth around 1929. Sakamatsu Ino worked as a landscape gardener until his son, Akira, took over his business. Ino and his brothers traveled to Japan with their mother and attended grammar school there from 1924 to 1929. Ino returned to the U.S. for three years of high school in Los Angeles, before beginning work at a nursery growing flowers and vegetables for wholesale. During the forced removal, Ino was sent to the Pomona Assembly Center on May 10, 1942, and he arrived at Heart Mountain on August 23, 1942. He lived in apartment 12-17-C. At Heart Mountain, Ino worked in the mess hall. He answered No to Question 27 and Yes to Question 28 on the 1943 loyalty questionnaire. Before his arrest in 1944, he left camp for a few months to help a friend, Tatsuo Kochi, with a farming endeavor in Utah. Ino was arrested on April 7, 1944 for failing to appear for his pre-induction physical. He was tried and convicted in June 1944 for violating the Selective Service Act and sentenced to three years in the federal prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Ino was released in July 1946 and pardoned by President Harry Truman on December 24, 1947. After prison, he returned to Los Angeles, eventually marrying his wife, Mie, with whom he raised three children. Toru Ino died on April 11, 2007, in Los Angeles.