Last updated: May 8, 2026
Article
Ned Akimoto
Photo courtesy of Bonnie Akimoto, Ned's daughter.
Before the War
Ned, the oldest son of Masanori and Miki (Mary) Akimoto, was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho where Masanori was the Director of Labor for the Utah-Idaho Sugar Factory. Ned’s parents instilled that the path to a better life was through education and hard work. After the Great Depression, the Akimoto family moved from Idaho to Los Angeles, where Mary became the first woman of Japanese origins to be a licensed agent for the Beneficial Life Insurance Company. Ned wanted to become an engineer and was accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but could not attend due to family obligations. Instead, he went to Los Angeles Junior College where he was a member of the Engineering Honor Society. While Ned had to drop out of the program to drive his mother while she sold insurance, he still earned an Associate of Arts degree.
Photo courtesy of Bonnie Akimoto, Ned's daughter.
Forced Removal and Incarceration
After Executive Order 9066, Ned was incarcerated at Santa Anita Assembly Center, a temporary detention center, and forced to live in a horse stall with the rest of his family. A month after their confinement in Santa Anita, the manager of the Idaho-Sugar Company visited Masanori, asking him to lead a group of laborers recruited from the camps to work in the sugar beet fields. Masanori declined but volunteered Ned to lead the recruited workers. The family received a work clearance to leave Santa Anita and relocated to Idaho for work. However, after receiving threats of violence towards the family, they were forced to move to Salt Lake City, Utah. Brothers Victor, Ted, and Johnny, who had left to join the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, sent money from their small military wages when they could. Eventually, the meager sums and difficult labor proved too much for their aging parents and in June of 1943, Ned and the rest of his family moved to Amache. Ned later recounted that while his younger brothers enlisted, the family decided that he needed to stay out to look after their parents. Like many Nisei, Ned did not speak about what he endured during his incarceration.
After the War
When Ned was a teenager in Idaho Falls, Masanori had brought Emiko (Emmy) Tsujimoto and her older sister Elna to the Akimoto home so they could play with his two middle daughters, Martha and Margaret. At that time, Ned wasn’t interested in “what the girls were doing” and paid no attention to them. After the war, while visiting Salt Lake City from Chicago, Ned met Emmy again, who was a registered nurse. He recalled that on one of their dates, he bought Emmy a huge parfait sundae. He told her he didn’t think she would be able to finish it. She did.
Emmy followed Ned to Chicago, where they got married on December 6, 1945. They had two sons, Steven and Martin. Ned introduced them to his love of fishing. In 1958, Ned and Emmy moved to Salt Lake City to be closer to Emmy’s family. While living there, Emmy gave birth to their daughter, Bonnie.
After 10 years in Salt Lake City, Ned was laid off. While Steven and Martin stayed in Salt Lake City to attend university, Ned, Emmy, and Bonnie relocated to southern California where Ned found work at McDonnell Douglas, an aerospace manufactoring company, and later at an electronics firm, where he was a machinist. Ned and Emmy remained in southern California until 2003 when they moved to San Jose. Ned passed away there in 2009 at the age of 92.