The Mission’s eccentric Japanese izakaya Chome is making a move this week, opening up in a new location at 26th Street and San Jose Avenue after a temporary one-month closure.

The restaurant — with a bar — is aiming to reopen on Nov. 10 at 3601 26th St., nine blocks from its old spot at 18th and Mission streets and in the former home of Wild Pepper, a Chinese restaurant that closed in May after 15 years.

Storefront of Chome’s new location at 3601 26th St., which used to house Wild Pepper. Photo by Xueer Lu. November 8, 2023.

“We are very excited about this new place,” said Judy, an employee who has been working at Chome since it opened in October 2021. “Some neighbors already came and said hi. We are very grateful for that.”

It is unclear why the izakaya relocated, but the move will come with a few tweaks to the menu and will provide the restaurant with a bigger dine-in space, according to Judy. Most of the employees now working at Chome will be sticking with the restaurant, she said. 

The restaurant, which gained a reputation as a hidden gem, had a petite dining area with only six tables. Customers would often face lengthy wait times to get a taste of the restaurant’s various offerings — grilled skewers, udon, ramen, and other fare from the five-page long menu. 

Chome’s old location at 2193 Mission St., has become the home for Undingable, a temporary dim sum spot created by Chome’s owner, serving Shanghai-style soup dumplings, shumai, and other Chinese dishes. 

Undingable, as in “un-ding-able,” is a coined word translated from Chinese, meaning unstandable. The name came from the inside jokes among the staff at Chome when they make fun of each other. 

This tiny but fast-paced dumpling shop is currently open for business but for limited hours – only from 5 to 11 p.m. from Tuesday to Saturday. 

Undingable’s business hours. Photo by Xueer Lu. November 8, 2023.

Judy said Undingable is a transitional pop-up and will be replaced by  Shanghai Moon, the upcoming new restaurant that will occupy the spot  and serve Shanghai flavors. The crew is working on completing the signage, designing a new menu, and retraining the staff.

The “restaurant business is very hard in San Francisco so we really have to have the heart for it,” Judy said. “Hopefully the heart will keep going for years and years.”

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Kiyo Kobayashi is slight, soft-spoken and self-effacing, with an unruly tousle of black hair.

The silhouette he cuts is a far cry from Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone, but the 41-year-old could conceivably be called San Francisco’s Japanese startup godfather. He helped seed a community of like-minded immigrant founders who moved halfway around the globe to change the world from the Bay Area.

“I’m too old,” Kobayashi joked about the godfather label. “But I’m living the dream. Doing startups is my passion, and so is helping other founders.”

Through group chats, calls, dinners and daily feedback reports from younger founders laying out their activities, challenges and questions, his aim is to build up a stronger pathway for these entrepreneurs.

Kobayashi also serves as an advisor and an early-stage investor for dozens of startups from Japanese founders. “Kiyo’s Family” is a collection of around 25 Japanese immigrant entrepreneurs in San Francisco and 50 in the wider Bay Area he helped foster.

“We are probably the first generation of Japanese immigrant startup founders in the U.S.,” Kobayashi said. “Every time I see traction and good news, I feel like we should accumulate this value to the next generation.”

Around a dozen people met for a dinner party at the apartment of one of the group’s members on a recent balmy evening, sharing stories and advice over Korean short-rib stew and above the din of standing fans. These gatherings are a common occurrence for the family.

Kiyo Kobayashi, second right, has dinner at a friend’s home in San Francisco on Friday. | Source: Philip Pacheco for The Standard

When Japanese business leaders swing through the Bay Area, they will often stop by for a meeting or a meal as a way to glean insight into the entrepreneurial community.

Kobayashi himself has started and wound down a number of companies in the decade since he’s been in San Francisco. He’s currently working on a recruiting startup in the Web3 space, but his larger project is working to develop a sustainable pathway for Japanese immigrant founders.

Forging a Path

Kobayashi became a known figure in the Japanese business world when—spotting the coming opportunity enabled via smartphones—he founded Nobot in 2009, one of the country’s first mobile advertising companies. The real sea change came when he ended up selling his startup a couple years later to major telecom corporation KDDI for $19 million.

“It was essentially one of the first successful case studies of [mergers & acquisitions] in Japan,” said Kaz Tamai, founder and CEO of startup design firm Zypsy. “Back then, everyone thought M&A was a betrayal because you were passing along ownership to someone else. It was like selling your family.”

Kaz Tamai, right, speaks with a friend as they have dinner at a friend’s home with other startup founders brought together by Kiyo Kobayashi. | Source: Philip Pacheco for The Standard

But Tamai said the sale proved that the startup model could work and helped provide the foundations for what is increasingly becoming a thriving domestic startup ecosystem. According to data from Initial Enterprise, total venture capital funding in Japan has grown more than 16 times between 2009 and 2021, rising from $130 million to $2.2 billion.

Kobayashi tried to take Nobot international but was stymied by the domination of American tech giants like Google. The roadblock helped inspire him to move to San Francisco to create a company that could have global impact.

To hear it from Kobayashi, he arrived in the city in 2013 with no connections, no English skills and, really, no idea. His first stop was at language school to help him learn to communicate.

“In Japan, I was connected with pretty much every startup founder and investor,” Kobayashi said. “But when I moved here, I was treated like an elementary school kid because I couldn’t speak English.”

Kiyo Kobayashi receives a certificate after completing a language course during his early years in San Francisco. | Source: Courtesy Kiyo Kobayashi

Kobayashi notes that a community of Japanese founders at the time was virtually nonexistent, a stark contrast to the strong connections made among immigrant entrepreneurs from Asian countries like India, South Korea and China.

Those early days were filled with plenty of discomfort and shame. Kobayashi said he was scammed a few times by those offering to provide connections or help with the business and visa processes. Through painful trial and error, Kobayashi was able to build up the right set of contacts to help others in his situation with business incorporation and immigration issues.

One of his early protégés was Satoru “Steve” Naito, the CEO of Anyplace, which offers furnished apartments with high-speed internet for remote workers. Naito was writing a blog about his experiences in Silicon Valley after he arrived in 2014, and Kobayashi reached out to connect.

Kobayashi helped inspire Naito and a handful of entrepreneurs like Tamai to root themselves in San Francisco instead of retreating back to Japan and provided meals, advice and some initial seed funding. The group would often tag-team meetings together to help one another communicate with limited English skills.

“When I moved to San Francisco, I didn’t speak English. I didn’t have money. I didn’t have friends,” Naito said. Ordering a cup of coffee at Starbucks was a challenge, Naito said, and often led to cloyingly sweet drinks.

Satoru “Steve” Naito has dinner at a friend’s home with other startup founders brought together by Kiyo Kobayashi. | Source: Philip Pacheco for The Standard

To help build a home base for the community, the group started a shared house in Balboa Park that worked as a living space for Japanese founders. Although described lovingly by Naito as a crowded and messy dorm, the home accommodated hundreds of prospective founders and visitors.

“It became a good place for Japanese people to land in San Francisco and be together and exchange information,” Naito said.

The group also continued to write for a Japanese audience, blogging online about their experiences in Silicon Valley and interviewing other founders and members of the local tech industry to spread word of their activities.

Kohei Nagata, founder of blockchain startup Senate, said he was inspired to come to San Francisco five years ago after reading Naito’s own account of moving to the city despite not knowing any English.

He started speaking to Kobayashi after connecting on social media. What started out as occasional conversations during household chores turned into daily feedback sessions.

“There were times when there was no point in using his time to help, when I had no hope literally,” Nagata said. “But he still kept trying to give me advice every single day.”

Nagata didn’t hesitate to say that, without that line of support, he would have already left the city.

Kohei Nagata has dinner at a friend’s home with other startup founders brought together by Kiyo Kobayashi. | Source: Philip Pacheco for The Standard

“In order to keep grinding for that startup dream,” he said, “you have to believe in yourself, sure, but you have to have someone who believes in more than you do yourself. That’s the feeling Kiyo gave me.”

Family Time

Kobayashi lives in Mission Bay with his wife and two small children. More than a dozen other entrepreneurs have moved to his apartment building or his neighborhood to be nearby for advice and a stronger network of support.

Kobyashi’s mentorship provides a warm embrace for many folks who move to San Francisco with few connections. He and his wife host regular events like barbecues or weekend trips, and he said he considers the community of founders part of his extended family. He also brings together small groups of founders at the start of each year to set their intentions and share their learnings and mistakes.

Datz Daito is an entrepreneur who was drawn to building a global tech startup in San Francisco, moving to the city as a teenager in 2019. Daito runs DeStore, an apparel shop in Hayes Valley that operates with a collective decision-making model by the company’s members.

Instead of rooting around in the proverbial darkness, these immigrants found that Kiyo’s Family provided a way to plug into investors, mentorship and a place to live. There’s a team spirit that fosters a feeling of camaraderie. A win for one founder is a win for their entire family.

Datz Daito, left, has dinner with other startup founders brought together by Kiyo Kobayashi. | Source: Philip Pacheco for The Standard

“If anybody’s successful, they add more value to the overall ecosystem, and the probability for success for everyone is higher,” Daito said.

Sumino Koiso, found her way into the community during her first trip to San Francisco through her mentor, who is a member of Kiyo’s Family. Now, she relies on their connections to find trustworthy accountants and lawyers to guide her through the visa process.

Her working theory on why there’s been only a limited number of Japanese immigrant founders has to do with a discomfort with speaking English in professional settings and a cultural fear of failure, which leads to calculated risks rather than the wide swings in fortune seen in Silicon Valley.

There’s also the relative geographic isolation of Japan, which has a strong domestic economy, as well as an internal business culture difficult to penetrate for outsiders.

She struggled to find the right words to characterize how she and other members feel when returning to Japan, so she used a translation app on her phone.

Sumino Koiso, left, and Misaki Kobayashi, right, chat during a dinner gathering of startup founders brought together by Kiyo Kobayashi. | Source: Philip Pacheco for The Standard

“Societally unfit,” the screen read when she turned it around. “We’re different because we can take these risks and tell our thoughts directly which for some Japanese people make them uncomfortable.”

Although there have been a handful of Cinderella stories for Asian immigrant startup founders like Zoom’s Eric Yuan, that level of success has thus far eluded Japanese immigrant entrepreneurs.

Kobayashi believes that the Japanese are great at following role models, but someone needs to act as a trailblazer. He wants to be part of the team proving that having success is possible. For an analogy, he turned to baseball’s Ichiro Suzuki, who was the first Japanese position player to find success in Major League Baseball.

The startup journey is, for the most part, defined by failure. And many entrepreneurs in the network said Kobayashi’s most valuable advice was in dealing with personal and business failures and giving them confidence to move forward.

Kiyo Kobayashi has a discussion during dinner at a friend’s home in San Francisco on Friday. | Source: Philip Pacheco for The Standard

Kobayashi has weathered his own share of failures in his entrepreneurial journey. On particularly rough days, he’ll pop into a neighboring apartment where a number of Japanese founders live and work.

“I’ll have dinner with them, and I’ll ask if they have any problems that I can help them with,” Kobayashi said. “It’s confirming that the reason why I am a founder and an entrepreneur is to help others.”

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Akira Okura

Akira Okura has lived all over the world, moving to new countries for work throughout his career, including Spain, Singapore, the United States and Japan. “I love moving,” he joked.

Okura was appointed as chief operations officer of Beard Papa’s USA in June. The 435-unit Japanese cream puff franchise has locations internationally and in 16 states. The dessert concept gives customers the option to choose a shell, like honey butter or chocolate éclair, and a filling—vanilla, green tea or chocolate.

Beard Papa’s was founded in 1999 in Osaka, Japan. The brand has since grown in popularity, with the Beard Papa mascot having a spot in Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph,” voiced by John DiMaggio.

Okura previously worked as an executive for Beard Papa’s parent company, Muginoho International, from 2004 to 2011. He started in Japan before being transferred to the U.S. division in Los Angeles.

Most recently, Okura worked for Franchise World Link as the Japanese country manager.

Previously, Okura was a major part of the U.S. introduction of Beard Papa’s in Los Angeles in 2004. He plans to use that experience to further expand the brand nationwide, with the goal of opening 100 stores in three years. So far, the brand has about 40 open.

“First of all, I want to make many stores in big cities,” he said, naming options like Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco to add additional stores. “And then be a strong brand name, and then go to new, smaller cities.”

A lot has changed since Okura was last working on franchise development in the United States 12 years ago—even the price of the cream puff. “Our cream puff, when I was here, was like $2. Now, depending on the store, it’s like $3. So, it’s double,” he said. So far, his colleagues are helping him catch up on the last decade-plus of the brand. “We’re adapting and trying to restart this brand.”

The franchise still has franchisees he used to work with, too. “It was great to work with them again,” Okura said.

Beard Papa’s isn’t just a dessert franchise—the brand considers itself an experience.

“We are using natural vanilla bean for our signature. We are baking the puff in the oven for the customer on site. We inject cream into the freshly baked puff in front of the customer,” Okura said. “It’s entertainment, but it’s eating. Eatertainment.”

Executive Ladder

Dog Haus named Michael Montagano, the former chief executive of Kitchen United, as CEO.

Mike Lopez was hired as Tint World’s chief operations officer.

KFC appointed Paul Tuscano as its first chief digital officer.

Subway named Douglas Fry as president of North America, replacing Trevor Haynes. Carrie Walsh was promoted to president of Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Mike Kehoe to global chief development officer. Cristina Wells was promoted to senior vice president of marketing.

Cousins Maine Lobster hired longtime Wendy’s executive Angela Coppler as its first head of development.

Mayweather Boxing + Fitness hired Ryan Reeves as chief development officer and Dawn Weiss as chief marketing officer.

FirstLight Home Care hired Kristen Duell as its executive vice president of experience and innovation.

Penn Station East Coast Subs hired Diane Matheson as its director of marketing.

Youth Athletes United promoted Annie Spaulding to chief operating officer and Bob Gibson to president of Soccer Stars.

ParkerStark Management, franchisees of Huey Magoo’s Chicken Tenders and Scooter’s Coffee, announced Kevin Armantrout as president.

Five Star Franchising, parent of Bio-One and 1-800-Textiles, hired Mike Miller as vice president of franchise development.

Smalls Sliders named Greg Swafford as vice president of supply chain.

Modern Restaurant Concepts, parent company of Qdoba and Modern Market Eatery, brought in Prashant Budhale as chief technology officer.

Carrie Walsh

Papa Johns named Patrick Coelho as senior vice president of development.

Metal Supermarkets named Elliott Tepperman as manager of e-commerce.

Craveworthy Brands named Greg Creed as its first advisory board member.

Big Frog Custom T-Shirts announced David Braun as chief development officer.

HomeFront Brands hired Meaghan Price as vice president of marketing, Paul Tucker as vice president of e-commerce and Jason Livingston as vice president of customer experience and analytics.

Josh Burris joined The Vitamin Shoppe as an advisory board member.

Chicken brand PDQ promoted Kep Sweeney to CEO, filling the hole after the departure of co-founder Nick Reader.

Stellar Service Brands, franchisor of Restoration 1, Bluefrog Plumbing + Drain and Softroc, named Courtney Harmon as brand president of Bluefrog and Softroc. Devin Ward was hired as vice president of franchise development and Kyana Shamloo as director of strategic initiatives for Softroc.

Brix Holdings named Luke Mandola Jr. as vice president of franchise sales and development.

American Family Care brought in Randy Johansen as its new CEO after D. Bruce Irwin, founder and CEO, died.

Yogurtland announced David Kahn as senior director of franchise development.

Lynn Edwards

Hounds Town promoted David Martinelli from vice president of marketing to chief relationship officer.

Dutch Bros President Christine Barone will transition to the role CEO after current CEO Joth Ricci announced he will step down. She starts her position in 2024.

Captain D’s announced Jeff Wilson as chief financial officer.

Ford’s Garage hired David Ragosa as its vice president of franchising development.

Jersey Mike’s brought back Paul Brodeur as vice president of franchise development.

The Joint Chiropractic hired Lori Abou Habib as chief marketing officer.

Taziki’s named Robert Brown as vice president of operations and Lynn Edwards as vice president of human resources and people operations.

Panera Brands named Paul Carbone as chief financial officer.

Valvoline named Lori Flees as CEO and president of the company when former CEO Sam Mitchell retires.

Ziebart International promoted Thomas Bowler to director of United States retail operations.

Rachel Rearden will be stepping into the chief experience officer role at skinBe Med Spa.

Scooter’s Coffee appointed Tim Arpin as chief sales officer.

Little Caesars promoted Paula Vissing from chief operating officer to president of global retail. Ed Gleich was promoted from chief innovation officer to president of global services.

WaterWalk appointed Jim Anhut as president and chief development officer.

Empower Brands announced Cory Lyons as brand president of Koala Insulation.

Send promotions and new hire news in franchising to Megan Glenn, mglenn@franchisetimes.com.

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Japanese long-haul, low-cost airline ZIPAIR has announced plans to add San Francisco as its fourth US destination. The low-cost subsidiary of Japan Airlines plans to offer direct flights between Tokyo Narita International Airport (NRT) and San Francisco International Airport (SFO) this summer. However, an exact launch date has yet to be confirmed.

ZIPAIR launched non-stop services to nearby San Jose Airport in December. With the addition of San Francisco, the Japanese airline is strengthening its presence in the Bay Area – a key area for the Japanese market.

The airline plans to use a Boeing 787-8 to operate the 5,000+ mile route, which will have a total capacity of 290 passengers, including 18 fully reclining business class seats.

Photo: Courtesy of Boeing Global Services

“We are very excited to welcome the ZIPAIR service between SFO and Tokyo this summer,” said Ivar C. Satero, airport director at SFO. “With this move, travelers can enjoy ZIPAIR’s fantastic value for money along with SFO’s award-winning, world-class airport experience. We thank ZIPAIR for choosing SFO and are committed to making this new service a success.”

ZIPAIR is a relative newcomer to the aviation industry, having formed in the summer of 2018. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it had to postpone the start of passenger services and initially operated only cargo flights that year. However, the company started commercial passenger flights in late 2020, and its fleet of four Boeing 787-8s now flies to six international destinations worldwide.

The Japanese carrier currently flies to Bangkok (BKK), Seoul-Incheon (ICN), Singapore Changi (SIN), Honolulu (HNL), Los Angeles (LAX) and San Jose (SJC) from its central hub in Tokyo Narita. San Francisco will be their seventh and fourth destination in the United States

ZIPAIR Inaugural San Jose Airport / Photo: Courtesy of ZIPAIR

The Japanese carrier will face intense competition on the Tokyo-San Francisco route as three airlines already operate non-stop flights between the two cities. United Airlines, All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines (JAL) operate all passenger services between SFO and Tokyo’s two airports – Narita and Haneda (HND). However, Zipair becomes the first low-cost airline to connect the two cities.

In addition to serving in San Francisco, ZIPAIR announced plans to begin direct flights to Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL) in the Philippines later this year.

“San Francisco has very strong demand from both Japan and Asia, Manila is seeing an increase in traffic to and from Japan, and more and more people are traveling from the Philippines to North America,” said Shingo Nishida, Zipair’s president.

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Daiso, the much-loved Japanese dollar store chain with locations across the Bay Area, is expanding in San Francisco.

Daiso is a 100-yen shop, meaning that a majority of the products sold can be purchased for about 100 yen in Japan, akin to dollar stores in the US It is the largest 100-yen store chain in Japan.

Its primary products include stationery, hard-to-find East Asian snacks and beverages and home and personal care goods, most of which are labeled with Daiso’s in-house branding. In the United States, most of its products cost between $1.50 and $2 — with larger furniture and technology goods still inexpensively priced.

A company spokesperson told the Business Times the Stonestown location will open in the middle of 2023.

Daiso has an often-crowded location in Japantown, and previously had a location in the Financial District. (It is unclear when that Daiso closed up shop, but Yelp reviews indicate that it was operating as of 2021.) Daiso also has at least a dozen other sites throughout the Bay Area, including in San Jose, Alameda and Daly City.

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While some claim San Francisco has lost its offbeat spirit, Japanese photographer Sage Akaboshi (@pueo_in_sf) says otherwise in the street photography he’s amassed since arriving here eight years ago, according to an SF Gate article about Akaboshis eccentric images.

One of Akaboshi’s pictures made it onto the publication’s Instagram. The photo, which shows a dog with a Luigi doll on its back and a similarly colored F-line in the background, received critical acclaim. The photo shows Akaboshi’s amazing use of depth, balance and leading lines (not to mention the charming duo as focus).

“Actually, I saw the dog a few days earlier when I was taking a picture. When I saw that dog again, I wanted to take a picture of the dog without the owner, like the dog walking alone,” Akaboshi told SF Gate. “Back then, the F line happened to fit in with it [its] color faded.”

The quality of work is consistent for many of Akaboshi’s photographs, which display many characteristics of daily San Francisco life. Skateboarders, dogs, beautiful buildings and murals are common motifs in his work. Although nothing is off the table. If it gets his attention, his phone is off and ready. Considering his Instagram features a wide range of topics, viewers get a variety of San Francisco and what the city has to offer.

Akaboshi’s passion for photography came about by accident. He grew up in Japan, where he often carried around film or a Polaroid camera.

“When I was young, I happened upon a campaign for Polaroid cameras [in] in front of a shop with my friends and I spontaneously bought one and immediately took photos of my friends with the camera on the street,” Akaboshi said in a story with PetaPixel.

After moving to San Francisco, he began capturing interesting situations and people with whatever camera he had handy, be it the one on his Google Pixel smartphone or his Sony a5100, a mirrorless camera.

Akaboshi can be found all over the city, but especially in hotspots like Market Street or the Mission District, where foot traffic is heavy and options are rife. Other common locations are both around and on the San Francisco Muni trains. The natural patterns and frames of its structures coupled with unique events and people create magnificent images.

While much of his work involves candid portraiture, Akaboshi tries to get permission for most of his subjects. However, most street photographers find it difficult to catch everyone’s attention when they walk by.

“If I see someone really close, something like the outfit and item they have, I’ll talk to them first,” Akaboshi said.

Akaboshi tells PetaPixel that he hopes to have his work in exhibitions soon. At the moment, those who appreciate his work and the beauty of the city can always follow his Instagram.

“I hope to capture my visual interpretation of the city around me in the images,” Akaboshi said in the interview.

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When Giichi Matsumura arrived at his final resting place in late December, the people who knew him best when he disappeared from a Japanese internment camp in 1945 already were there.

His wife, Ito, who had mourned his passing for 60 years before her death in 2005, was buried in the same plot, as was his daughter, Kazue, who died in 2018. His father, Katsuzo, who died in 1963, was nearby. His brother and two of his three sons were a short walk away, all buried in the shady, grassy haven of Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica

They last saw Giichi alive in the waning days of World War II at the Manzanar internment camp, one of 10 where the U.S. government held more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent for more than three years, claiming without evidence they might betray America in the war.

In the summer of 1945, Matsumura hiked from camp into the nearby Sierra Nevada the rugged spine of California, and never returned. His remains were committed to a lonely mountainside grave left to the elements.

His journey home, 75 years in the making, only happened after a hiker bound for the summit of Mount Williamson, a massive peak overshadowing Manzanar, veered off route near a lake and spotted a skull in the rocks. He and his partner uncovered a full a skeleton under granite blocks.

It was 2019, and the duty to bring him back fell to a granddaughter born decades after he died.

Lori Matsumura never expected to play that role. She knew of her grandfather’s unfortunate death, but it wasn’t something she often thought about.

Then an Inyo County sheriff’s sergeant phoned and asked for a DNA sample to see if the unearthed bones belonged to her grandfather, the only Manzanar prisoner who died in the mountains.

“It was a complete surprise when I received a call from the sheriff,” Lori said. “There were stories my grandmother told me about her husband passing on the mountain. They were stories to me, and it wasn’t reality. But then when the sheriff called it, you know, brought it into reality.”

That conversation set her on the first step of a mission to reunite her ancestors, a journey that awakened her to a history she had largely seen through a child’s eyes, the edges softened by a generation more inclined to look forward than dwell in the past. Stories that once seemed rosy lost their bloom when faced with the harsh landscape where her relatives spent more than three years in captivity.

Until the U.S. entered WWII after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Giichi Matsumura and his family lived what seemed like a quiet life in the leafy oasis of Santa Monica Canyon, a retreat for artists and stars of old Hollywood.

Born in the Fukui prefecture on the coast of the Sea of Japan, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1916, arriving in San Francisco on a steam ship with a single bag. His father already was there and they worked as gardeners and lived on property owned by the Marquez family, Mexican land grant owners of an area that became parts of Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

Giichi’s wife, Ito, arrived from Kyoto in 1924, according to U.S. Census records. The couple had four children born in the U.S.: sons Masaru, Tsutomo and Uwao, and a daughter, Kazue, the youngest. Kazue, Lori’s aunt, recalled a fun childhood in an interview by Rose Masters, a ranger with the Manzanar National Historic Site, a few months before her death in 2018.

Her mother would pull her in a wagon to play at the beach. She remembers seeing the actor Leo Carrillo, later known as sidekick Pancho to TV’s “The Cisco Kid,” doing lasso tricks.

Giichi Matsumura, who signed up for the World War I draft, registered again on Feb. 14, 1942. Five days later, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order that would force people of Japanese descent on the West Coast into prison camps in waves.

Under an April 20, 1942 order, the Matsumura family had about a week to leave their life in the canyon behind.

Kazue, who wasn’t even aware there was a war, recalled her experience as a 7-year-old.

Her father had to give away his car and they were only allowed to bring a single suitcase to camp.

She had been excited about taking a bus trip, but the novelty after a long ride from LA through the desert along the dramatic eastern flank of the Sierra quickly faded when they arrived at Manzanar.

“I noticed it was all dirt,” she said. “Nothing there. Like a desert.”

Manzanar, which means apple orchard in Spanish, quickly became home to 10,000 people of Japanese descent — two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens — living in hundreds of cramped, tar-paper covered barracks.

The family would have shared a barrack with four to six other families, each unit separated only by a thin wall that did not extend to the pitched roof. There was little privacy.

The shacks were so poorly built that frequent winds blew sand through the cracks in walls and floors. There was no insulation, making scorching summers intolerable and frigid winters unbearable.

Giichi Matsumura worked as a cook. In his spare time, he painted watercolors, capturing the guard tower, barracks and Mount Williamson, the second-highest peak in California.

His eldest son, Masaru, Lori’s father, had been about to graduate from high school when they were imprisoned. Instead, he had to wait until the next spring when he was in the internment camp’s first graduating class.

Lori remembers her father talking about the camp’s most infamous incident when guards shot into a crowd of people, killing two and injuring nine.

But she doesn’t know much about his time there. He didn’t like to discuss it.

What she knew came mostly from her grandmother and Aunt Kazue, who lived together across the street, stories about squashing scorpions on the way to the bathroom using geta — elevated wooden sandals.

Lori Matsumura always meant to visit Manzanar. But she’s not sure she would have made the more than three-hour drive north from Los Angeles.

A few weeks after the sheriff’s call, she and her boyfriend, Thomas Storesund, drove to the station in Lone Pine where she gave an oral swab for DNA. They then drove a few miles north where the National Park Service operates the camp as a sort of living museum.

The sentry house still stands at the entrance. A replica of one of the eight guard towers looms overhead and replica barracks, a latrine and a mess hall recreate what the camp looked like, minus hundreds of other structures crammed into a square mile of high desert surrounded by barbed wire.

The buildings display vestiges of life in camp and some of the many indignities experienced, such as the loyalty questionnaire adults had to complete.

“How could something like this happen in America?” Lori thought.

But she wasn’t struck by the gravity of her family’s loss until she visited where they had lived.

Standing near a sign for Block 18, Matsumura looked out at an inhospitable barren patch of scraggly rabbitbrush, fiddleneck weed and a row of barren locust trees. She was filled with sorrow.

“I was blown away by how desolate the place was,” she said. “Seeing it in person made it so sad for me. I don’t think I could have survived that.”

For the first time, Matsumura felt a connection to the place her family lived. She was walking in their footsteps. It was now real.

While the buildings were gone, one reminder stood out: Mount Williamson standing at 14,374 feet (4,381 meters) to the west. It was the site of her grandfather’s first grave.

Giichi Matsumura left camp July 29, 1945 heading toward that peak with a group of trout fishermen for a several-day outing. He planned to sketch and paint.

Prisoners had been free to leave camp six months earlier, but about 4,000 internees remained. Many, like the Matsumuras, had nowhere to go or feared racist reprisals in places they once called home.

Ito Matsumura didn’t want her husband to go on the trip. She forbade him from taking his art supplies because she feared he would stop to paint and get lost, Lori’s Aunt Kazue recalled.

It takes at least a full day to ascend about 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) to reach the chain of lakes where they were destined. The trail eventually ends and hikers must navigate a forbidding jumble of granite in the thin air at the high altitude.

On Aug. 2, Matsumura stopped to paint as others fished.

When a storm blew in, the fishermen, who had been there before, knew where to shelter in a cave, said Don Hosokawa, whose father, Frank, was on the trip. The men couldn’t find Giichi after the storm and returned to camp, hoping he headed there.

Exactly what happened to Giichi Matsumura remains unknown. Aunt Kazue said she heard her father slipped on wet rocks and hit his head. Don Hosokawa said the body was later found next to a bloody rock.

His disappearance came four days before the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima that would hasten the Japanese surrender.

Three search parties looked for him in the following weeks. They found only his sweater.

About a month after he was lost, a hiker from nearby Independence was trying to summit Mount Williamson with her husband and a friend, but rain ruined their plans. They stopped for lunch, and Mary DeDecker, a botanist, noticed a branch in the rocks below, which struck her as unusual because trees don’t grow at that altitude.

A closer look revealed a body.

A small burial party from camp made a last trip into the mountains, carrying a sheet from Ito Matsumura to wrap her husband in. They buried him under granite and affixed a simple piece of paper to a block to mark the grave. In Japanese characters, it gave his name, age and said, “Rest in Peace.”

The group returned with locks of his hair and nail clippings, a Buddhist tradition for a body that couldn’t be returned.

About 150 people attended a funeral ceremony back at the camp. A photo by Toyo Miyatake, famous for documenting Manzanar life, shows mourners in dark suits and dresses behind a wall of crepe paper flowers.

Aunt Kazue lamented that it was difficult never having seen her father’s corpse or his gravesite.

“To this day it seems like he’s not passed away,” she said. “It seems like he’s gone some place because I don’t see his body.”

At the Manzanar cemetery, where a tall white obelisk is often decorated with chains of origami cranes left by visitors, a sign says 150 people died at camp. Most were cremated and their ashes buried after their families left camp. One man, Giichi Matsumura, the sign says, died exploring the Sierra and “is buried high in the mountains above you.”

That sign will have to be changed.

The gravesite was not widely known so it initially appeared to be a mystery when hikers unearthed it Oct. 7, 2019. Officers from Inyo County Sheriff’s Office flew by helicopter to retrieve the remains.

When word reached rangers and historians at Manzanar, they had a hunch who it was.

“It wasn’t a huge mystery,” Ranger Patricia Biggs told Lori Matsumura in February last year. “We would have been amazed if it wasn’t your grandfather.”

Sgt. Nate Derr had called Matsumura for a DNA sample because she was listed at the historic site as a contact person for her aunt. It took about three months for the Department of Justice to match her DNA with a tooth from the remains to positively identify her grandfather.

Derr notified her in January last year. Then she had to decide what to do with the bones.

Manzanar wouldn’t allow her grandfather to be buried in the small cemetery where only six bodies, interred when the camp was operating, remain. His bones also couldn’t be returned to the mountain.

The thought of scattering his ashes at one of those places held some appeal. Although it’s illegal to scatter ashes on public lands, Lori said she was told by one official that no one would stop her.

But it was unlikely her family would trek up the mountain for a burial service and returning him to a place he’d been captive seemed in poor taste.

After consulting her siblings and cousins, they decided he should be cremated and laid to rest with his wife. His name was already on the grave marker, his toenail clippings and hair buried with her.

Lori had to sign paperwork amending the death certificate from a burial to a cremation. And she wanted to view the remains.

On Presidents Day last year, she and other family members went to the small city of Bishop, about 45 minutes north of Manzanar, to Brune Mortuary, which is also the county coroner’s office.

Coroner Jason Molinar began to lead Lori and her niece, Lilah, from his office to a private viewing room when Lori halted in the doorway to reassure the 11-year-old, who was scared.

“They’re just his bones. That’s all it is,” Lori told the girl.

Laid on a sheet-covered gurney were the remains of the grandfather she’d never met.

The skeleton was roughly arranged in order. The skull was bleached white, most likely from sun exposure. The ribs, spine and joints were stained a shade of brown.

Molinar pointed to a coil of fishing line, the remains of a rusty pocket knife and two buttons found with the bones. A pair of shoes and belt he had worn were next to his lower leg bones.

It was remarkable to find the body 99% intact, Molinar said, a testament to a good burial in a climate where the remains were probably encased in snow and ice much of the year and undisturbed by people or critters.

“The crazy part is the fact that it’s this well-preserved,” he said. “Usually after this many years, you just find fragments.”

Lori made a video call to her sister, Lisa Reilly, who lives in San Francisco and couldn’t make the trip.

“Do you want to see Grandpa’s bones?” she asked.

She then turned the camera to the skeleton and artifacts. She paused at the skull and pointed out the sutures, the fine cracks where the bones of the skull are joined that had begun to separate from exposure. The cracks had led the hikers to speculate on social media about foul play.

Lori and her niece stood with their hands clasped in prayer and heads bowed. They prayed he would rest in peace and be reunited with his family.

After the viewing, they went to Manzanar to donate the shoes, belt, fishing line and knife, to be put on display.

As Biggs looked at the weather-beaten shoes and withered belt, she was almost overcome with emotion.

“I just want to have a moment,” the ranger said. “Out of respect. Wow. It’s amazing to me the things that last forever and the things that don’t.”

In a guest book, Lori’s nephew, Lukas, 9, wrote: “We are bringing you home Great Grampa Giichi Matsumura. We love you.”

Two weeks later, Lori retrieved the ashes.

Lost once and found twice, it was now time to properly bury Giichi Matsumura.

On Dec. 21, Lori, her brothers, Wayne and Clyde, along with Clyde’s wife, Narumol, and two children brought his ashes to a burial service at Woodlawn, which is a block from where they grew up.

The Rev. Shumyo Kojima, a Buddhist priest, assembled a small altar with a framed photo of Giichi Matsumura in front of the box containing his remains.

“He moved from the high Sierra to here. All of you are eyewitnesses,” Kojima said. “This is a kind of house-warming party. So, everyone will be here to celebrate his new residence.”

Kojima lit incense and picked up a bell that he rang at different intervals as he chanted ancient sutras, bowing repeatedly.

Each family member stepped forward to sprinkle incense in a burner while Kojima chanted.

Kojima showed a document from the Zenshuji Buddhist Temple that recorded memorial services Ito held for her husband on important milestone anniversaries over the years. It showed how she kept thinking about him, the priest said.

Three cemetery workers then moved the altar to reveal a hole in the ground. One of them placed the box of ashes in the shallow grave.

As the interwoven threads of incense smoke drifted northeast — the direction of Manzanar — the family members each took a turn dropping a shovel full of dirt on the box.

The grave-diggers finished the job and placed a bouquet of white flowers on the grass. Kojima sprinkled water over the grave for purification.

Lori Matsumura wished the hikers hadn’t disturbed the grave. She imagined it was a beautiful setting in mountains her grandfather admired.

Yet she was satisfied he was back with those who loved him.

“His body is laid to rest with everyone, so it’s kind of just closed the chapter on my dad and his siblings and parents,” she said.

She only regretted they weren’t alive to see it.

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