“She was a fine lady,and the work that she has done will go on for a long, long time. … Probably there are few women in the Church who live away from Zion who have met so many of our leaders and have been able to impress themselves upon them because they all knew who was meant when we asked about Natchie-san.Her spirit will always be a blessing in our lives.”

I believe I worked in one area with where a senior ward member was a Yanagida. I can’t remember what her married name was but she had wonderful stories to share of those early days in the church. My favorite was how, back during the “withdrawn era”, the Saints weren’t allowed to meet, proselyte, or perform ordinances — sacrament included. Her fiance had studied the gospel in her home and wanted to be baptized but couldn’t with the restrictions in place. They decided to postpone marriage until everything was restored and he could be baptized.

I understand this sister and her family were heavily involved in creating/translating the post-war Japanese hymnbook.

I haven’t thought about her in 20 years. Thanks AEP!

Whether or not she is remembered at home, she is representative of all the Pioneers we might be remembering this week and I’m glad to have stumbled across her story.

I believe a few of the others include Sister Yanagida’s family, as well as a Sister Kumagai in Sapporo, who was still alive when I was on my mission there in 1970 and a missionary couple, the Christensens, who had served there in the 1920s came from Hawaii unexpectedly for a visit and found her there. The planned program for Sacrament Meeting was scrapped and the three of them bore their testimonies and spoke of their experiences. The Christensens then took Sister Kumagai, eight or so missionaries (including the mission office staff) and several other members out to dinner. All of those early members have special stories, especially of how they coped during the over 20 years after the mission was closed in 1924 (in the wake of the US passing the anti-Japanese law prohibiting further Japanese immigration, which was only repealed just before my Mother and I–yes the one in the Nagoya Relief Society photo–came to America), including the war years and the post-war Occupation, when military Mormons restarted missionary work in Japan.

The timing of this is coincident to the 88th Birthday of Tomi Sato. Sister Sato was the second wife and now widow of Tatsui Sato, a chemical engineering professor who was converted by LDS servicemen in the early days of the Occupation. When he was baptized, an American fighter pilot who baptized his first wife was named Boyd K. Packer. Later when their son Yasuo was baptized, my father was a participant. When my dad was called as a missionary, he held Sunday School in Brother Sato’s house.

Brother Sato was fluent in English and was for many years the Church’s principal translator, updating Alma O. Taylor’s Book of Mormon and adding the D&C and Pearl of Great Price, as well as A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, and Jesus the Christ, and various lesson manuals. He probably translated Improvement Era articles for the Seito no Michi. In the mid-1960s, he was sent to the Hawaii Temple and translated the temple ordinances into Japanese in preparation for the first temple excursion from Japan.

A few years later, after his first wife died, he immigrated to Salt Lake, where he was translating genealogical sources, and where he joined the local Japanese-language branch of the Church, now the Dai-Ichi (First) Ward and met Tomi there, where she was doing simultaneous translation between English and Japanese during Sacrament Meeting. They were among the first ordinance workers at the new Tokyo Temple in 1980, and we visited them at their home when I was there with the Air Force. Elder Packer spoke at Brother Sato’s funeral about ten years ago, and he came to Sister Sato’s birthday party Saturday, July 19. And both my parents came.

Sister Sato’s daughter Michi was a missionary in Osaka and taught my grandfather’s cousin, whom we call “Aunt Okumura”. She married Doug Matsumori, an attorney in Salt Lake, and he served as bishop of the Dai-Ichi Ward and as a mission president in Japan in the early 1990s.

I recall that Tomi is from Hawaii, born in 1920, and may have been one of the people whose lives were touched by Sister Nachie.

I think I’ve seen only the outside of it, in my brother’s library, but I didn’t open it.

Trying to catch up to DCL, I’ve done some googling for “Seito no Michi” but have yet to find it. I did find a brief history of the Relief Society in Japan from 1951 to 1991, written by Yanagida Toshiko. The highlight of the article: a photograph of Relief Society leaders including Fumie Swenson, who has got to be the mother of Raymond Takashi Swenson.

A great post, a touching story.

I could find tiny traces of Tsune’s story in many places, but nowhere told as a coherent story. If any of you with Japanese skills and access to Japanese materials, like your “Seito no Michi” mags, DCL, I would be grateful for you to keep her in mind and send me anything that would help to correct or expand this sketch.

I liked the photo of the Saints gathered around her gravestone, with the marker seeming to be her still standing in their midst. It would be good to know that she was still remembered in that part of the world.