Watanabe-Kimura Family Papers

Chie Watanabe Katsuno (1901-ca. 1993) was born in Sapporo, Japan. After graduating from high school, she worked as a bookkeeper at the Sapporo Railroad Station. In 1924, she married Reverend Paul Watanabe and moved to the United States. She and her husband had three daughters – Grace, Jessie and Ruth – and spent the early part of their marriage moving around as her husband led various churches throughout the country.

Reverend Paul Yorishige Watanabe was born in Gifu, Japan. He lost his father to an earthquake and was raised in a Christian orphanage. In 1907, Watanabe moved to the United States and settled in the San Francisco area where he attended night school for some years before moving to Aurora, Illinois and then to Texas. Watanabe graduated from the Bryan Baptist Academy in 1914 and continued his education at Baylor University and Simmons College, from which he graduated in 1919. He also completed one year of graduate school at Yale University.

In 1941, Reverend Watanabe was diagnosed with cancer. Shortly thereafter, the United States entered into World War II and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed United States Executive Order 9066. This order led to the forced evacuations of Japanese Americans and ethnic Japanese people from designated “military zones” located mostly along the West Coast. Being that the Watanabe family lived in Los Angeles, they were ordered to evacuate their home at a time when Reverend Watanabe was critically ill. The family’s influential friends requested permission on the family’s behalf to be assigned to a nearby assembly center so that Chie and her daughters could be close to the hospital as Reverend Watanabe underwent surgeries and treatment. Their request was denied and the government sent Chie and her children to Poston Relocation Center in Arizona instead. Reverend Watanabe remained behind in a Los Angeles hospital and died just 25 days later in June of 1942.

Chie’s older daughters were released from Poston after a five month internment and headed to Simmons University where they obtained their undergraduate degrees. Chie remained in the relocation center with her youngest daughter for a two year period. Upon her release, she moved to Texas and worked as a “domestic” before deciding to relocate to Chicago with her daughters.

In 1949, Chie married Araki Katsuno, the owner of an artificial flower business. Chie joined her husband in making his business a success and was married to him for twenty years before he passed. She was active in the Senior Citizens Workshop hosted by the Japanese American Service Committee.

Grace Watanabe Kimura (1925-) was born in Los Angeles, California and is Chie and Paul’s eldest daughter. She began her high school career at Roosevelt High School in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles but transferred out due to overcrowded conditions. She continued her education at Huntington Park High School until her schooling was interrupted by the attack on Pearl Harbor and her subsequent internment.
After she was released from the Poston Relocation Center, she went to Abilene, Texas to finish her high school education and then went on to obtain her undergraduate degree in Business Administration. She relocated to Chicago and worked for several years until she met her future husband, Eugene Kimura, at a Japanese American Citizens League meeting. At the time, Eugene was a PhD student at the University of Chicago with a focus on pharmacology. The couple married in 1950 and moved to New York where they had two daughters. Eventually her husband found a job opportunity in Illinois and the couple moved back and had their son. When their youngest child was in high school, Grace returned to the workforce as a legal secretary and then as an administrative assistant. Both Grace and Eugene retired from their jobs in 1989 and recently moved to a retirement community in LaGrange Park, Illinois.

Biographical histories of Jessie and Ruth Watanabe are unknown.

Source: Watanabe-Kimura Family Papers