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Ishimaru, Jay Jyunichi

Biography:


Jay Jyunichi Ishimaru was born in Watsonville, California, on March 31, 1920, the fourth of nine children born to Asa and Tojiro. Ishimaru grew up helping his family with their farm in the Mountain View area. During high school, he worked as a truck driver when he wasn’t in school. Ishimaru graduated from Mountain View Union High School in 1939. He arrived with his family at Santa Anita Assembly Center on May 27, 1942 and at Heart Mountain on Sept. 13, 1942. On Dec. 20, 1942, he married Shirlee Miyoko Kanzaki, a young woman he had been friends with since high school. They lived in apartment 23-13-CD. He answered No to Question 27 and Yes to Question 28 of the 1943 loyalty questionnaire. Throughout 1943, Ishimaru left Heart Mountain for seasonal work at a cannery in Utah and at a construction site in Nebraska. He was arrested May 13, 1944, and was tried and convicted in the June 1944 trial of 63 draft resisters. He was sentenced to three years in the federal prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He was pardoned by President Harry Truman on Dec. 24, 1947. After his release, he and Shirlee eventually returned to the Mountain View area. They had two children, Byron and Sharon. Jay Jyunichi Ishimaru died on January 14, 1996, in Sunnyvale, California.

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