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Yoshiko Miwa

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Yoshiko Miwa
Yoshiko Miwa
Miwa on her 109th birthday in 2023
Birth: 28 February 1914
Guadalupe, California, USA
Death: 13 February 2025
Torrance, California, USA
Age: 110 years, 351 days
Country: United StatesUSA
Validated

Yoshiko "Yoshi" Miwa (née Tanaka; 28 February 1914 – 13 February 2025) was an American supercentenarian who was the oldest living Japanese American and the the oldest living survivor of the Japanese internment camps that operated during WWII. Her age is validated by the Gerontology Research Group (GRG).

Biography[]

Yoshiko Miwa was born to Japanese immigrants Umekichi and Masu Tanaka in Guadalupe, California, USA, on 28 February 1914. She was the fifth of seven children. Her father was a farmer. Her mother died from the Spanish Flu when she was only four years old; following this, her father placed her and her four sisters in a children's home, where she lived until she graduated high school in 1932.

She attended the University of California in Berkeley, and earned a degree in business administration. However, she was unable to find a job in the business field and went to work as a company bookkeeper for a family member's wholesale produce business.

She met her husband, Henry Miwa, in the late 1930's and they were married in 1939. They had three sons, including Alan Miwa. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Miwa and her family were taken to an internment camp in Arizona. Towards the end of WWII, her husband worked as an interpreter with the United States Office of Strategic Services. She and her family were released in September 1945.

After WWII, Miwa and her husband co-founded a nursery called the Prairie Nursery, which they sold in 1963. At the age of 45, she received a Licensed Vocational Nursing license after attending the California Vocational Nursing School in Los Angeles and got a job at the Veterans Administration Hospital in the same city. She later worked at the Memorial Hospital in Gardena, from which she retired in 1984. She still drove at the age of 100, and can speak three languages; English, Spanish, and Japanese. She has ten grandchildren and nineteen great-grandchildren. She has also wrote an autobiography in 1992.

Yoshiko Miwa died in Torrance, California, USA on 13 February 2025 at the age of 110 years, 351 days.

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