From Japanese internment camp to Colorado farmland: Meet 101-year-old Helen Horii

Hello, Coloradoan readers.

Erin Udell here.

In this job, I get to go to new places, learn new things and meet new people almost every day.

Late last month, I got to do all three of those things as I walked through the doors of Brookdale Fort Collins’ memory care unit.

Amid pink and purple balloons, a dozen residents and staff meandered around the facility’s dining room shuttling plates of turkey burgers and steamed veggies for that day’s lunch.  Off to the side, however, you could tell Helen Horii was having a special day.

With a pink “Birthday Girl” sash slung around her chest and gold “101” balloons behind her, Helen rang in her 101st birthday one day early on Aug. 19. Staff set her up with a special meal, from a bowl of syrupy peaches — her favorite — to more fresh fruit, steamed broccoli, sushi and chocolate cake.

The plates before her symbolized a lot in Helen’s life. The sushi was a nod to her Japanese heritage. The peaches and broccoli represented her lifelong love of fruit and vegetables, which she grew up eating on her family’s farm on the West Coast. That was, of course, before World War II. Just shy of her 21st birthday, Helen became one of the estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans be sent to Japanese internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Ultimately, that’s where she met her husband, Roy. The two left their internment camp for a slice of Weld County farmland at the beginning of 1944. Within just a matter of two years, Helen went from being a Northern California farmer’s daughter to a Northern Colorado farmer’s wife. She’d continue to carve out a life for herself far from home — raising three kids, farming for 40 years and being part of Northern Colorado’s tight-knit Japanese American community.

So help me wish Helen a belated birthday by reading about her extraordinary life. May it help inspire you to eat your vegetables.

— Erin Udell, erinudell@coloradoan.com

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: From Japanese internment camp to Weld County farmland: Meet 101-year-old Helen Horii