Student no. 6 extends family’s 100-year Pharmacy legacy

(Health Sciences NewsBeat, October 2015)

Beau Chiba’s lineage in the UW School of Pharmacy is long and strong. When he graduates in 2018, it will be 101 years since his great-grandfather, Yasukuchi Chiba, earned his degree in Pharmacy. In fact, Beau Chiba is the sixth member of his family to attend the school.

His family’s story echoes the social, political, and economic ebbs and flows of the last century.

Shirosabura Chiba, Beau’s great-great-grandfather on his father’s side, was a pharmacist who emigrated to the United States from Japan with his young family. When his son, Yasukuchi, graduated from the UW in 1917, he worked with his dad and operated several pharmacies in the Seattle-Tacoma area, including Main Drug in Seattle’s International District.

Twenty years later, in 1937, Yasukuchi’s son Bain graduated with his pharmacy degree and began work at Main Drug. Bain’s brother-in-law, Noboru “Nibs” Morio, began his pharmacy studies at UW just before WWII. Mary Shimoda, who would later marry Nibs, was also a student there.

In early 1942, all four members of the family were practicing or learning pharmacy when President Roosevelt, on the heels of Pearl Harbor, signed an executive order to relocate 120,000 Japanese-Americans to internment centers. Family members were forced to leave their homes in south Seattle and Beacon Hill. Automobiles were impounded, homes and property sold. Main Drug was lost.

The Chibas initially spent months at a short-term detention center on the Puyallup fairgrounds, living in shacks and on limited food rations. The Army called it Camp Harmony, laughably.

The UW president and faculty advocated for their students. President L.P. Seig wrote letters to 25 college presidents begging them to take UW’s Nikkei students. Most schools didn’t want the students. One dean went to Puyallup to hold an informal graduation ceremony for Nikkei students who were just one month from commencement.

Weeks later, the group was moved to the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho. Among them was Mary Shimoda, Nibs’ future wife, and her mother and sister.  An outstanding student, Shimoda in 1942 was named to Rho Chi, a pharmacy honor society, in absentia, while she was at the Idaho camp.

Nationwide, there was a shortage of labor, and some internees were able to leave camps. Bain, a knowledgeable pharmacist, was transferred to the University of Michigan hospital. When he could afford it, he moved his family to safety in Michigan, where they lived out the war.

Nibs took a different path. He enlisted to serve with the 442nd Infantry Regiment. With the motto, “Go for Broke,” the Japanese-American regiment was the most decorated in U.S. military history for its size and length of service. Nibs was deployed to Italy and then France, earning two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star.

In 1946, Nibs married Shimoda; she had left camp by transferring to Idaho State University to complete her education. Nibs eventually retired from his Army post as a hospital pharmacist and returned to the UW to finish the education he had started 20 years earlier. Upon graduation, he moved with Mary to Bellevue, where they continued to practice pharmacy, she at Group Health and he at Overlake Hospital.

Bain and his family returned to Seattle a few years after the war ended. He was able to resume ownership of Main Drugs, even as hard times persisted for Japanese-Americans in the Northwest. For the Chibas, the International District community was a safe harbor.

In 1966, 20 years after they married, Nibs and Mary’s son Dave (Beau’s cousin) enrolled in the UW School of Pharmacy, graduating in 1971. Later he owned and operated Fife Pharmacy and, as a UW clinical assistant professor, helped precept many students.

In 2008, the UW Board of Regents voted to issue 450 honorary degrees to students who had been pulled from the classroom and sent to internment camps and war. Among the honorary grads were Nibs and Mary.

The Chiba-Morio family history reflects the pharmacy profession’s changes over the last century. Main Drugs closed in 1978; condos now sit in its place. As physicians left the area and drug reimbursements dwindled, Dave closed Fife Pharmacy in 2010, after 25 years. He now works for Safeway pharmacy.

Last fall, Beau Chiba picked up the family mantle by enrolling at UW.

“I never got to meet my grandfather, but I’ve been told he was a character and that I’m just like him,” Beau said. “I chose UW School of Pharmacy to stay connected to my family history. It feels like home.”