As a frightened high school girl in wartime Japan, Yukie Holland developed a talent for rescuing food.
“When I would go to school, on the way back home I would be passing by the farm houses. I would ask, ‘can I have a few potatoes’? Sometimes they would just give some food to me or let me clean the garden. Or maybe I helped them do some work. If they didn’t have any food, I might just take some kindling wood home.”
The pickings were small and slim in a country suffering from hunger due to the war. When she got home she got a real reward; a big smile on her mother’s face.
“She would say, ‘no matter where you go, Yukie, I am never going to have to worry. It doesn’t matter what happens, you won’t be hungry, you make yourself food’,” Yukie said.
That’s exactly what Yukie does today as the volunteer cook for everybody at the Fort Bragg Food Bank. The clients get first crack at the veggies. Yukie then picks through the veggies left behind. All the staff and volunteers say Yukie’s meals are one of the best things about the Fort Bragg Food Bank.
“I do the same thing now. I get food and it just needs to be washed and worked on and there is something very nice,” Yukie said. “People waste good food now, it’s too bad.”
She has volunteered for 16 years at the Food Bank. The youngest of five children growing up on the Southern Japanese Island of Kyushu, Nagasaki, the second of two cities hit by American nuclear bombs, was not far from her home. The day the bomb went off was one of many terrifying days in which residents spent their days in hiding, darkness and fear.
“We led miserable lives then. Nobody was happy. We had almost nothing. It was hard times. I walked to school with no shoes on. I don’t really like to talk about that time,” she said.
Yukie also didn’t want her age used.
“But you can probably guess from my story. Don’t do that,” she said with a big laugh.
She remembers the moment she heard the war had ended as a secret happy moment.
“The teacher came in and announced that we lost the war. Everybody cried. I didn’t say anything but I was happy it was over. I didn’t want any more war, death or any more fear. All the lights had to be out every night. I was scared all the time. I would come home from school and if my mother wasn’t in the house I would get so worried that something had happened to her until she came home.” Her mother sewed the names of herself and all her children into all their clothing.
“So we could be identified if something happened to us,” Yukie said.
After the war she got a job in a souvenir shop.
“There weren’t too many jobs then. You could also get a job as a dance hall girl,” she smiled.
“The GIs and sailors just wanted to take something home. We sold knick-knacks, cups, that kind of stuff,” she said.
A sailor from the U.S. Navy came into the store looking for something much more substantive. They got married when she was 22. “It was very late to be married then. I was old,” she said with another big laugh. In 1957, her husband brought her to Fort Bragg.
“I was a housewife, raising children. I was so homesick for the first six months. I lived up on Chestnut Street. In those days there was a foghorn that went off all the time. And when it would make a terrible sad sound, uwwwwwuu, I had never heard one of those before. Oh, I would cry,” she said.
As the next door neighbor of the Food Bank, I’ve stopped in almost daily for many years, whether or not I’m writing about the non-profit at the time. Everybody is working busily virtually all the time, so there isn’t a lot of time for chat. I deliver about a hundred books per week for the food bank to give away. That’s my excuse to visit. Then I go into the kitchen, where I like to smell the food Yukie is cooking for the day. The aromas are never the same and it’s always intriguing. What has she scrounged up this time?
Looking in at the stews, casseroles, pizzas, pastas and pastries fails to give a complete answer.
There is only one way to solve the mystery! However, I decided years back that because I wasn’t’ actually volunteering I wouldn’t join in the lunches. That could be addictive, believe me. I love the balance of give and take we have and don’t want to break it. Yukie sees me glancing lustfully at some tasty bit when I’m walking by and contributes to my debauchery. “Oh, try it, you have to taste.” I do.
When you meet Yukie, there is no doubt she is Japanese but her mannerism are just as much Yankee. She is both forward and bashful. She is quick, outgoing, funny and helpful. She makes shy people more comfortable, willing now to indulge a hug when someone needs it. She likes helping the shy in particular, remembering how she felt when she arrived in blaring America.
“My mother told me to listen to other people and learn, instead of talking. I was afraid to speak anyway because I might make a mistake or people might laugh at me,” she said.
“There is the Japanese way and the American way. They don’t really mix sometimes. I had to learn and live the American way,” she said.
She is also one of those old Fort Braggers. She remembers one of her food good experiences was taking classes on home economics at Fort Bragg High School.
“It was at the old Fort Bragg High School, the one that was junior high and now middle school,” she said.
She is helpful to those who helped her and taught her. “I taught them flower arranging” she remembers. Flower arrangement is one of the more serious arts in Japan, with Yukie able to help locals learn several styles practiced. Japanese culture has always been a bigger part of American life than many people realize, from Origami to Sushi to Nintendo. Since Roman times, nations have learned that people learn from each other after wars end and cross immigrations happen. It often prevents future wars.
She grew into her life in Fort Bragg and loves her home. “I’m just not someone who likes big cities,” she said.
Her two children and six grandchildren live nearby and in Fortuna.
She volunteered at the Paul Bunyan Thrift Store before coming to the Food Bank in 2000.
“I didn’t intend to cook, but somehow I ended up cooking. This is what I can do. I don’t know how else to help,” she said, with her characteristic combination of humility and humor.
Yukie is the second longest-serving volunteer at the Food Bank. The longest-serving volunteer, Lupe Arreguin, is also a diminutive lady with a big personality who always has a kind word and sometimes a hug when I (and others) stop in. She gives out food on the line for the Food Bank. She often helps seniors in two languages.
The place is very friendly, moving along quickly but with lots of conversation.
“We do have fun but it’s also exhilarating and immensely satisfying when obstacles are overcome, differences ironed out and the place runs like a well-oiled machine,” said Fort Bragg Food Bank Executive Director Nancy Severy.
“The support to the operation that our volunteers selflessly give over and over again is truly inspiring,” Severy said.
She said volunteers from all backgrounds arrive to help, many for a short time, some year after year.
“They are a varied bunch — from retirees, to folks who are or who have been clients and want to give back, to homeless people, to people doing Community Service, to disabled adults,” said Severy.
I talked to two newer volunteers, Tracy Anderson and Sue Gibson. Anderson started last year, Gibson this year. They have been pleasantly surprised at how rewarding the work is, how good the food and how much fun it is.
Without any hints, I ask them what the best part of the Food Bank is?
“Yukie’s lunches,” Anderson answers, with nods from Gibson.
Checks for the Season of Sharing can be made to the Food Bank and mailed or dropped off at 910 N. Franklin Street. Please put “Season of Sharing” on the memo line. No amount is too small, the Food Bank can stretch every dollar. Your donation will go a long way towards making the lives of your friends and neighbors better. Donor names will be printed in the following week’s edition, unless they wish to remain anonymous.
