#41 Yoko’s Frequent Visits to Larsen Park in 1930
Yoko usually spent her weekends at Larsen Park. Her family would drive there, and she would play to her heart’s content with her friends. On the way home, they would sometimes give her friends a ride back to their houses.
The area west of Twin Peaks was undergoing rapid residential and urban development as the city of San Francisco expanded.
Larsen Park was established after Mr. Carl Larsen, a Danish immigrant, donated land that had previously been a poultry farm to the city. Mr. Larsen passed away on November 5, 1928, and the new park opened in 1929. Yoko and her family were regulars at Larsen Park from the very beginning.
While looking through a photo album, I came across a picture of the Ito family playing at Larsen Park in April 1929. You can even get a sense of the rather barren, undeveloped landscape surrounding the park in the photo.
The Mr. Ito in question is likely Sangoro Ito 伊藤三五郎, an employee of the NYK Line San Francisco branch who lived in Berkeley. After graduating from the University of California, Mr. Ito settled in Berkeley, working first for Toyo Kisen and subsequently for NYK Line. There are his son, Hideya, and his daughter, “Fumi-chan”…!
“Fumi-chan” — yes, that’s right! She was the girl in the kimono standing in front of the upright piano in the 1929 Christmas photo. I wonder if that picture was taken at the Ito home. Sangoro Ito gave private violin lessons for a time after graduating from university, so music may well have been a part of their daily family life.
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And so, throughout the weekends of 1930, Yoko continued to play energetically at Larsen Park. On July 26, 1930, her younger brother Ichiro also made his debut at Larsen Park.
She continued visiting Larsen Park throughout summer vacation; it was common for her to go there on both Saturday and Sunday.
The Matsukuma family possesses several photographs captioned “At Larsen Park, August 1930.”
She often played there with friends like Marjorie, Ginger, Helen Kelly, Jean, and Betty. Perhaps the children in the photo are these very friends. On August 3, there was some concern that Ichiro had developed a case of poison ivy, yet it appears he was back at Larsen Park with her by September 21.
There is also a photo from September 1930 titled “At Larsen Park.” In it, she is wearing a rare pants outfit and is cradling a baby doll — not Ichiro — in her arms.
I was as hungry as little bears. So when it was dinner time, I ate as much as I could.
“Hungry as a bear” is an English idiom meaning to be extremely hungry or famished; a Disneyland restaurant based on this phrase is quite famous. Seeing such an idiom appear in her diary makes me realize just how much she had grown compared to the previous year.
