8, Shimo received his draft notice from the Los Angeles draft board. He recalled that a lot of the Caucasian students went on to work in Washington DC as Japan “experts.” And although these Caucasian students held similar opinions as Shimo, since he was a Japanese American, his views were considered “pro-Japan.” Shimo was also taking two courses at UCLA related to Japan, one of which was a political science course taught by a Caucasian. He never imagined that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor. He felt this move might force Japan to attempt to take over the oil fields of Borneo. 7, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, Shimo was working on his thesis, in which he noted that the U.S. As a result, Shimo pursued graduate studies in international relations at UC Berkeley. However, just about that time, Congress passed a law that prevented men of military age from leaving the country. The questionnaire was an eye-opener for Shimo, and he decided he wanted to pursue U.S.-Japan relations, so he was set to enroll at Keio University in Tokyo after he graduated from UCLA. These answers were published in The Rafu Shimpo. For example, Bank of America replied that they would never hire a Japanese, except for the Little Tokyo branch. When he became president of the UCLA Japanese American Business Students Club, he spearheaded a project that sent out questionnaires to 75 American firms, asking them if they’d hire a qualified Japanese graduate. Shimo’s other love was baseball, and he was part of the Cougars baseball team.Īfter graduating from Roosevelt High School in 1937, he enrolled at UCLA. Shimo was also involved with Chuo Gakuen’s Boy Scout Troup 197, which was just as big as the more well-known Koyasan Boy Scout Troup 379. When Chuo Gakuen was built, his father moved his kendo classes to the school auditorium, where Shimo assisted his father as an assistant kendo instructor. He also started teaching kendo at the Evergreen Park gymnasium, while his mother taught Japanese at the Nichiren Temple, where Shimo also attended Japanese language classes. His father found employment with The Rafu Shimpo but moved on to selling insurance and later fertilizer. At the time, his father was running a sizable cotton farm in the Imperial Valley, but when the price of cotton collapsed, the family moved to Boyle Heights, where Shimo grew up in a multi-cultural neighborhood, surrounded by Japanese, Russians, Mexicans, Italians, Jews and African Americans. Shimo was born in Heber, Calif., in the Imperial Valley. However, Shimo’s maternal family was originally from the Kagoshima region and had fought alongside Saigo Takamori. Shimo was the only child born to Tamori and Yoshiko Urakami Shimo, both from Okayama.
Cedrick Masaki Shimo, a World War II military resister and an executive at American Honda Motors, USA, passed away peacefully on April 1.
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