On March 8, 1998, when three close friends met in a restaurant in Santa Maria to celebrate their birthdays, as they'd done for many years, little did they know that it would be the last year they'd be able to celebrate together.

Ken Kitasako of Arroyo Grande, Masaji Eto of Los Osos, and Paul Kurokawa from Santa Maria, although born in different years, were all born on March 8.

The friendship Mr. Kurokawa and Mr. Eto shared stemmed from the Buddhist Children's Home in Guadalupe, where they were among the first students of the Rev. and Mrs. Issei Matsuura.

Students from as far away as Lompoc, Los Osos and the Huasna Valley lived at the home during the school year, attended Guadalupe's public school during the day and returned to the “home” for additional classes in the Japanese language and culture.

Since Paul was an only child and Masaji was the only son among five sisters, the two became fast friends and “brothers,” a relationship that lasted a lifetime. Paul, who was born in 1915, often teased Masaji, who was born the following year, “I'm your older brother so you have to listen to me!”

Paul Kurokawa, the only child of Hisato and Isano Kurokawam, was born in San Luis Obispo. He lived at the Buddhist Children's Home in Guadalupe until it was time for him to enter junior high school in San Luis Obispo, where he was one of the first Nissei enrolled in the school. An Eagle Boy Scout, Paul progressed from the junior high school to San Luis Obispo High School, where he excelled in sports and distinguished himself as a student leader.

His mother, who had been a teacher in Japan, encouraged her son to continue his education, but during those Depression days, there just wasn't a lot of money. Although he wanted to enroll in the University of California and study to be a diplomat, the $75 monthly tuition was more than his folks could afford. Paul finally enrolled at the Meiji University in Tokyo, where the $25 monthly tuition fee was more than a Japanese policeman's salary.

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During Paul's six years at the university, he earned a master's degree in business administration and a bachelor's degree in economics and political science.

After graduating from the university, Paul remained in Japan, where he went into international trade. In the winter of 1940-41, when relations between the United States and Japan had become so strained that all American citizens were warned to leave the country, Paul decided to come home. The ship that he boarded was the last ship permitted to leave the country before Pearl Harbor was bombed. While on this ship, he met Bette Fukuda from Los Angeles, who had also been studying in Japan. The couple was married Aug. 3, 1941, at the Buddhist Church in San Luis Obispo.

Ken Kitasako, son of George and Fumi Kitasako, was born in San Francisco in 1907. Wanting to leave the rubble of the big earthquake behind them, his father moved the family to Palo Alto the following year. After his mother's death in 1917, Ken assumed many of the responsibilities of taking care of his two younger brothers, George and John.

Ken graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1925 and enrolled in Stanford University, graduating in 1930 with a bachelor of arts in economics.

In 1923, at the age of 16, while still in high school, Ken obtained a summer job with Setsuo Aratani's Guadalupe Produce Company. This marked the beginning of what would prove to be a lifetime connection with the produce industry, as well as an enduring friendship with Setsuo Aratani and his son George.

Ken often talked about his first trip to Guadalupe. Leaving his father and two brothers behind, the 16-year-old boy climbed aboard the train in Palo Alto, having no idea where he was going. With the name of town being Guadalupe, Ken thought that he was headed for Mexico!

Upon arriving in Guadalupe he was directed to the Kodama Boarding house on Guadalupe Street where he rented a room, and began working for Guadalupe Produce the next morning.

Although small-framed, Ken proved to be a hard worker and quickly won the favor of Setsuo Aratani, who affectionately called him “youngu.”

In the meantime, he joined the Guadalupe Buddhist Church, where he played the position of catcher on the church's baseball team.

Both Yoshiko and Setsuo Aratani developed a special liking for the energetic young boy, and often included him in their family celebrations.

After Ken graduated from Stanford with a degree in economics, he accepted a job with the newly organized Tomooka brother's Santa Maria Produce.

When Mr. Aratani heard of this, and approached Ken saying, “Youngu, I thought that you'd be working for me,” the young man answered, “But sir, you didn't ask me.”

Ken's first job with Santa Maria Produce was as the company's bookkeeper. He was later promoted to sales manager, helping to establish contracts in such major cities as Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York and Boston.

After wiring ahead, if the produce wasn't purchased at its first destination, Ken would instruct the railroad company to “let it roll” (or go on to the next city) in hopes that the produce would be sold before the train reached the end of its line.

Mutsako (Muts) Tamura, who lived with the Aratanis, was a pretty young woman with an easy smile. Setsuo, being a typical Japanese matchmaker, often approached the girl, telling her that she'd “better think about getting married.”

When the Aratanis hosted a sukiyaki dinner for the Japanese American Citizens League in Santa Maria, they made a special point of inviting Ken Kitasako. The rest became history. Muts and Ken were married in 1934 at the Guadalupe Buddhist Church, and held their wedding reception at the New York Cafe.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, life for Japanese people living on the West Coast went into a tailspin.

Although fearing the worst, they were unprepared for the president's Executive Order No. 9066 issued on the Feb. 19, 1942, giving the military broad powers to ban any Japanese-American citizen from a 50- to 60-mile-wide coastal area stretching from Washington state to California, and inland into southern Arizona. The order also authorized transporting these citizens to assembly centers hastily set up and governed by the military, and calling for the removal of people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast of the United States.

From the Kitasako house on Guadalupe Street, Ken watched town policemen and FBI agents going up and down the street picking up Japanese people and taking them to the American Legion Hall, which was then being used as an assembly point.

By the end of April, after having been given 72 hours in which to dispose of their belongings and gather up only the items that they could carry onto the bus, Guadalupe residents of Japanese heritage lined up to be counted, tagged and loaded into buses to be delivered to temporary quarters in Tulare.

Kermit McKenzie, principal of the Guadalupe Grammar School, offered to let the Kitasakos store their possessions in one of his spare rooms. Some people, though, lost everything.

By August of the same year, most of the people in the Tulare camp had been transferred to Arizona's Gila River Relocation Center, where they joined about 12,000 Japanese Americans already living there.

Soon after the 35-year-old Ken arrived at Gila, camp officials sought him out. “They were looking for men who had experience in farming to open up the desert.” Ken, after looking out at the sand and sagebrush, shook his head and doubted if anything could be grown there.

However, within six months, the land had been converted into paradise. Watermelons, squash and cantaloupe flourished in the virgin ground.

Ken, an American citizen, was assigned work in the housing department, and the government reclassified him from 1-A (eligible for the draft) to 4-C (an enemy alien).

In July 1944, after Ken's records were screened and found to be clean, he was sent to work for a Chicago defense company. After working six months making gaskets for Sherman tanks, Ken faced being moved again when the FBI found Japanese Americans to be acceptable soldiers, and the draft board changed their classifications from 4-C to 1-A.

Although many of the Japanese men were called upon to fight, Ken's supervisor, feeling that his job was essential to the war effort, obtained a deferment for him.

Paul Kurokawa was destined to take a different route as, a short time after arriving at the camp, he was approached by military authorities about becoming an instructor of the Japanese language for the newly formed Army Language School at Camp Savage, in Minnesota. (The school was later moved to Fort Snelling.)

All of the 20 civilian instructors at the school were Japanese-American men who had received their higher education in Japan and could speak Japanese fluently. Some of the other instructors from the Santa Maria area included Tad Yamada, Shoji Aoyama, John Kawachi and George Aratani.

The soldiers trained at this school went on to serve their country in many capacities, with some acting as spies for the United States. Because of their fluency in the language, they were able to break the Japanese codes, thus providing the Allied forces with another means of bringing the war closer to an end.

Little, if any information is available about the Eto family at Gila River.

When V-J Day came in August 1945, Ken, after spending 14 months in Chicago, picked up his family at Gila River and moved back to Palo Alto.

For three years, this Stanford-educated man supported his family by gardening.

When he received an offer to work at a packing house in Phoenix, he had reservations about returning to a place so close to the Gila River compound. However, when his family agreed that the produce business was where he belonged, the Kitasakos packed up and moved to Arizona.

Six months later, when the business went belly-up, Ken was once again without a job.

After trying unsuccessfully to find another job, Ken received word that the Pismo-Oceano Vegetable Exchange (a venture run predominantly by Japanese-American farmers) needed a foreman, and that the company wanted him.

Ken began working with POVE, and eventually worked his way up to general manager, a position that he held until he retired in 1977, after serving with the company for 25 years.

Ken also served as a board member of Kyowa Bank from 1978 to 1993, when he decided to take a total retirement.

Remembered as a humble man, Mr. Eto, who had worked on his family's farm in Los Osos, returned to the farm when the war ended.

After the war, when the Kurokawas returned home to Guadalupe, Paul and Bette ran a fish market with Paul's parents. Paul drove his wagon, filled with fish and vegetables out to the Oso Flaco farms, and into Santa Maria. He later opened Paul's Liquor in Guadalupe, a business that he ran until he retired in 1996. His was one of the oldest liquor licenses in Santa Barbara County.

Paul, the first of the trio to pass away, died Jan. 24, 1999. Masaji died Oct. 11, 1999.

In January 2004, at the age of 97, Ken went to live in the Alma House Retirement home in Arroyo Grande, where he established himself as an intelligent and quiet man of great qualities. His wife, Muts, had passed away in April 1997 at the age of 85.

Ken's 100th birthday was celebrated last year at the Buddhist Church, as well as at private parties throughout the area during the week. When he got up to speak, it was evident that, although his knees were shaky, the years hadn't diminished his intelligence.

On the 20th of April, when Ken, at the age of 101, passed away at the Alma House, the Central Coast lost a remarkable man, and I lost a good friend.

Shirley Contreras lives in Orcutt and writes for the Santa Maria Historical Society. Contact her at 934-3514 or at shirley2@pronet.net. Her book “The Good Years,” a selection of stories she's written for The Times since 1991, is on sale at the Santa Maria Valley Historical Society on South Broadway.