Lawrence Toshimichi Yamamoto

1929-2021

Lawrence (Larry) Toshimichi Yamamoto, artist and longshoreman, ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) died March 18th, 2021 at the age of 91, at home with his wife, Judith, and two daughters, Omi and Ruth Yamamoto, at his side. His first-born child, poet/social activist Peter Kenichi Yamamoto, died two years earlier. Larry is also survived by his much-loved granddaughter, Momoye Yamamoto: his sister, Chitose (Chibi) Yasumoto, and her children, Jason Yasumoto and Liane Yasumoto: his brothers, Leo Yamamoto (deceased) and Stanley Yamamoto: and many cousins and their children in the Bay Area and in southern California. Larry was born in Oahu, then the territory of Hawaii, in 1929, the year of the Great Depression in the United States and also in Hawaii. Larry’s parents left him and his older sister in the care of their grandparents and came to California where it was easier to find work. The grandparents raised the children in a small railroad camp on Hawaii’s North Shore. Larry remembers his grandfather taking him along after work to fish for dinner at the nearby shore. When Larry was six years old, Grandma sailed with the two children to America, where she left them in Los Angeles with their parents. Larry was 11 years old when World War II broke out and his family, with babies Leo and Stanley, was interred in the Gila River concentration camp in Arizona. Amid the hardships of camp life, it was there that Larry discovered his love of the desert, and where his art teacher in the camp school encouraged him and inspired him to become an artist. At war’s end Larry and Chibi left the camp before their parents did and traveled back to Los Angeles, where Larry worked his way through high school as a houseboy. He attended Otis Art School, then came to San Francisco. He married Judith in 1953, and started longshoring on the S.F. waterfront and raising a family. When Ruth was born, he and Judith bought a piece of land in Muir Beach and, assisted by a neighbor, artist/carpenter Gordon Mosteller, Larry designed and, with Gordon, built their home. Larry and Judith lived in Muir Beach for 45 years, with chickens, dogs, a sheep, and a vegetable garden as Larry commuted to the S.F. waterfront to work, and made art (mainly watercolor paintings), until, as he said, “We got old.” Larry and Judith moved back to the Fillmore District in San Francisco, next door to Japantown, for the last eight years of his life. Larry loved life. He loved and cared for his family, and believed in the Union, the working class, and people’s struggles for freedom, justice, and better lives. An injury to one is an injury to all!