A Look Back on 100 Years

By Rev. Patti Oshita and Rev. Bob Oshita

We are grateful to have our Uncle, Toshio Fukuda, an ACC Greenhaven Terrace resident, as one of the Centenarians being honored by ACC Senior Services.

It is amazing to consider what our Centenarians have lived through.  Born 100 or more years ago, each one of them is like a “Living Time Capsule.”  We can talk with them and be transported back decades.  We can ask questions about how things were, and they become our direct, living links to the past.  The “current events” of their childhood and early adulthood are now considered events of world history:  World War I, The Roaring Twenties, The Great Depression, World War II; and for our Uncle, the forced incarceration into internment camps along with 120,000 men, women and children of Japanese ancestry.   

Our Centenarians can remember a time when there were no paved roads. Henry Ford rolled the first Model T off the Assembly Line in 1908, and they have lived to see the entire nation paved coast to coast.   How the world has transformed in their lifetimes; the things that their eyes have seen.

In 1903, the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.  During the early childhood of our Centenarians, human flight was a “barn storming” novelty and they have lived to see men walk on the moon and flying as a routine part of life.  

They have lived through nine decades of the last century and into the new millennium.  And whatever difficulties life brought their way, whatever adversities they were made to face, they survived and somehow endured.  What is their secret?  Most would say, “I don’t really know.”  But their longevity can certainly be attributed, in part, to good genes, good fortune and good family.

It is impossible to think of the Centenarians in our Asian community without a sense of amazement.  They overcame obstacles of language and prejudice with grace and dignity.  We often hear of their generation’s phenomenal work ethic.  When we have talked with our Super Seniors over the 32 years we served the Buddhist Church of Sacramento (The Betsuin), it is clear that they worked hard with the hope that perhaps someday their children and their grandchildren might have more opportunities to seek a better life.  And in this they certainly did succeed.  We, the generations that have followed, inherit the legacy of their efforts and sacrifices.  

In the Buddhist Tradition, we would say that they are an essential part of our Karma (the countless causes and conditions / people and events that allow us to be here today).  It is an honor to recognize our Community Centenarians, for they represent a generation that will always remain a part of our collective heritage.