Mas Masumoto (left) and Shizuko Sugimoto in 2013.

Mas Masumoto

conceal caption

toggle caption

Mas Masumoto

Mas Masumoto (left) and Shizuko Sugimoto in 2013.

Mas Masumoto

This story is a part of the My Unsung Hero collection, from the Hidden Brain workforce. It options tales of individuals whose kindness left a long-lasting impression on another person.

Growing up, Mas Masumoto was vaguely conscious that he had an aunt who’d been separated from the household within the Nineteen Forties. Her title was Shizuko Sugimoto, and he or she had an mental incapacity. As was usually finished in these days, she grew to become a ward of the state. The household by no means talked about her, and assumed she had handed away.

But at some point in 2012, Masumoto acquired a shocking telephone message from a funeral residence employee named Renée Johnson. She needed to inform Masumoto a few shopper in her 90s that he would possibly know – a girl named Shizuko Sugimoto.

Johnson instructed him that his aunt had been residing in an assisted residing facility. She’d had a stroke and entered a hospice program, whose workers contacted the funeral residence to start preparations for Sugimoto’s eventual dying.

Typically, when the funeral residence took on shoppers that had been underneath the safety of the federal government, they might merely handle the final rights and handle the physique. But when Johnson found that Sugimoto appeared to haven’t any members of the family, she made a particular effort to find them – and located her solution to Masumoto.

“She looked up in the 1930 census, found Shizuko’s name with my mom’s name, and proceeded to phone me so Shizuko would not die alone,” Masumoto recalled. “It was amazing for Renée to go through all that work when she didn’t have to.”

Mas Masumoto.

Mas Masumoto

conceal caption

toggle caption

Mas Masumoto

When Masumoto instructed his household, he requested them to sit down down. “And I said, ‘You remember Aunt Shizuko?’ And they all said, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, she passed away a long time ago.’ And I took a deep breath and I said, ‘No, Shizuko’s alive.'”

His household was shocked.

“Everyone said, ‘No, that can’t be, that can’t be right.’ And then I told them the story of what happened. And they all paused and said, ‘We need to see her. We need to go see her.'”

The household did get to satisfy Sugimoto; she lived one other two years after they reunited. They had been additionally capable of thank Johnson.

Masumoto and his household proceed to be thankful for Johnson’s extraordinary efforts, which uncovered a bigger story concerning the efforts to maintain Sugimoto’s existence hidden.

“Renée opened the door to a family secret,” Masumoto stated. “For my parents’ generation and grandparents, this was a secret that people had. And it brought shame to a lot of people. And people were treated wrongly by becoming invisible and hiding these kind of facts.”

Masumoto went on to put in writing a guide about his aunt’s story, launched in 2023, titled Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm. It’s now a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. And it began with the quiet effort of a funeral residence employee, Renée Johnson.

“We were forced to re-examine and probe our own family secrets, and I want to thank you for that,” Masumoto stated. “Because you have changed our family history, and also opened my own eyes to understand this is part of the legacy that I carry. And all thanks to you.”

My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are launched each Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain workforce, file a voice memo in your telephone and ship it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.