Yoshinori “Yosh” Ernest Bokura was born on April 6, 1935, in San Francisco and passed away peacefully in San Francisco on February 11, 2025. He was 89 years young.

Yosh was the youngest of five children born to Masaaki and Misao Bokura. His oldest sister, Margaret, died when she was days old.

Yosh’s life was an adventure with tragedy and hardship as well as great joy and resilience. When Yosh was three weeks old, his father was killed when a Southern Pacific train collided with his car as he was crossing railroad tracks in San Pablo, California. His mother, Misao, was left to provide for her four surviving children, Hannah, Maria, Louise and Yosh. Not to be defeated, Misao got herself an attorney, sued Southern Pacific and won. The family survived thanks to the award from the lawsuit.

Lucky for Dad, his mother met Shigeru Inokuma, an editorial writer for the New World Sun, one of three Japanese language newspapers in San Francisco. Shigeru and Misao were married a few years later. Dad told us many times that his stepfather treated him as if he was his own son. They went fishing and took ferry rides across the San Francisco Bay.

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United States was drawn into World War II. In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to relocation centers further inland resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans. Our very resourceful and strong-willed Grandma told my dad that “No one was going to put her in a camp.” She looked through the Cheyenne, Wyoming yellow pages, and found the Kubo family, a Japanese American family that agreed to sponsor their family to live on their beet farm in Meriden, Wyoming. They lived in Meriden for a year but decided to move to the City of Denver due to the harsh winters in Meriden. In Denver his stepfather received a telegram that his father was dying, and requested he return to Japan to take over the family business. The family made the difficult decision to move back to Japan in 1943 during World War II.

It took Dad seven years to get back to San Francisco. He started his sophomore year at Lowell High School and graduated in 1954. From Lowell he went onto U.C. Berkeley to study political science. He was the president of his student cooperative, Barrington Hall, because no one else wanted the job! While in college he spent his summers working as a bartender at Cal-Neva Lodge and the Biltmore Hotel in Reno and Lake Tahoe.

After graduating from Cal, he continued to work as a bartender in San Francisco and started law school at Hastings College of Law. During this time, he met our mom, Corazon Espejo, on a blind date. They married in 1962 and were married for 62 years. Dad and Mom eventually welcomed three children, Cynthia, Steve, and Jeff. He was also so grateful to have lived long enough to enjoy the company of his seven grandchildren: Stephen, Amanda, Brent, Nicole, Justin, Trevor and Julie Ann.

Unfortunately, Dad dropped out of law school. He continued bartending and was a bartender for over 45 years. He spent 37 of those years at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. Throughout the years, we enjoyed many fun and bizarre stories about his bartending days at the Fairmont.

Yosh’s life was one of great love, laughter, kindness, and perseverance in the face of adversity. He leaves behind a family who will forever cherish the memories of his dry sense of humor, adventurous spirit, love of the great outdoors and most of all his enduring dedication to his family. May he rest in eternal peace.

Please join us for a celebration of his life on Thursday, February 27th at 11:00 a.m. at Sunset View Cemetery and Mortuary at 101 Colusa Avenue, El Cerrito, California 94530. The service and burial will be followed by a buffet luncheon five minutes down the hill at Romano’s Macaroni Grill at 8000 El Cerrito Plaza.

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