Biography:
Ichiro Morita was born September 11, 1925, in Alameda, California, the oldest of eight children of Takuritsu and Toyo Morita. Takuritsu Morita was a teacher in a Japanese language school, while his wife was a homemaker. Takuritsu Morita was rounded up by the FBI and imprisoned in the detention center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Morita was a high school student at the time of the forced removal, and he, his mother, and eight younger siblings were sent first to the Santa Anita Assembly Center, where they arrived May 27, 1942. They arrived at Heart Mountain on September 13, 1942, and lived in apartment 23-15-DE. Morita answered No to Question 27 and Yes to Question 28 of the 1943 loyalty questionnaire. Takuritsu Morita joined his family in Heart Mountain on February 11, 1944. Morita was arrested May 13, 1944, for violating the Selective Service Act and was part of the trial of 63 draft resisters in June 1944. Morita was convicted and sentenced to three years in the federal prison at McNeil Island, Washington. After his imprisonment, the rest of the Morita family was sent to the detention center at Crystal City, Texas on January 22, 1945. Morita was released in July 1946 and pardoned by President Harry Truman on December 24, 1947. By the time of the 1950 Census, the Morita family lived in the Fremont area of Santa Clara County, California, where Toyo Morita worked picking flowers in a nursery, and her husband was not listed as having a job. Ichiro Morita worked as a map maker. He married Rose Nakano on August 24, 1958. They had one daughter. Morita worked as a draftsman for the H.M. Gousha Co., and then opened Morita’s Picture Framing in Campbell, California, which he ran for decades. Ichiro Morita died in San Jose, California, on May 7, 2022.