By Khalida Sarwari
The odds of living to 100 years old may be improving these days, but for one new centenarian, the odds weren’t exactly in his favor — the World War II veteran’s journey to the magic number was fraught with danger and hardships.
A birthday party Sunday for Frank Higashi of San Jose at the Santa Clara Valley Japanese Christian Church in Campbell celebrated his big day, with members of his church dashing around to put out food trays and display a poster congratulating him on the feat.
“I never expected to be 100 years,” Higashi said. “My family lived a long life, but 100? I think I’m the first one.”
Higashi, who still has a full head of hair, albeit white as snow, spent the better part of the program parked in front of a large projector that played a slideshow of moments from his life, including a handful with his late wife, Saeko, whom he lost to Alzheimer’s disease four years ago, and some with his church group.
What the slideshow left out are remarkable periods of the South Bay man’s life: living through two world wars, narrowly escaping the first and becoming intimately involved in the second; and surviving two cancers.
Higashi served a nearly three-month stint in the 10-member Military Intelligence Service that aided the U.S. Army in the Battle of Okinawa, the island in the Pacific Ocean that Higashi hails from. His daughter believes that the teams’ efforts in sweeping caves, intercepting and translating documents written in Japanese and communicating with the local Okinawan people brought the battle to a quicker end. “A lot of people don’t know how instrumental they were,” she said.
Later, Higashi and his wife settled in Southern California and then for decades in Sunnyvale. He raised four children while he worked as a gardener.
In the mid-1990s, Higashi found himself fighting an altogether different but no less formidable battle, this time in the form of prostate cancer. Surviving that, he was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2006, and he survived that, too.
Maybe his secret to longevity is rafute, an Okinawan braised pork belly dish that he still enjoys. If you ask him, he would attribute it to his otherwise healthy lifestyle — he still keeps mentally and physically active by gardening and reading outside — and faith. “I don’t worry too much,” he said.
On Sunday, Higashi’s loved ones took turns sharing kind words about him. One former pastor said he has never heard Higashi yell or speak loudly, a comment his 62-year-old daughter, Hiromi, later affirmed in her speech.
“At 100 years, he has seen a lot, and yet I’ve heard my father mention that one thing he would extend out is peace — peace between those different than you, peace between your families,” she told a room full of Higashi’s well-wishers.
