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From Returned Missionaries

George McCune's Tribute to Tatsui Sato

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A Tribute To

BROTHER TATSUI SATO

Scholar, Professor, Father, Researcher

Interpreter, Translator, Church Leader

Temple. Sealer, Genealogist

Temple Missionary, Saint

by

GEORGE M. MCCUNE

Salt Lake City, Utah
June 1996

 The Sage, Brother Tatsui Sato, 1899-1996, Taken in Salt Lake City about March, 1989

佐藤龍猪兄弟

Sister Tomiko Sato

現在の佐藤登美子姉妹 (December 2007)

When you approached the unpretentious home of Brother Tatsui Sato and his wife Tomiko around 2500 South and 800 East near the Sugarhouse district of Salt Lake City, Utah you would never know it hid one of the true scholars and sages of this dispensation. His home lies in the historic Salt Lake Granite Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one of the first two stakes organized in Great Salt Lake City by the 1847 Latter-day Saint Pioneers. Brother Sato's 1970 white Toyota sat in front of his home until 1992. 

When you walked through the front door, you sensed inhabitants Who realized important things in life--pictures of family and religion, books, newspapers, magazines, computer and a TV in the far left corner. On the low table in the middle of the living room sat a book holder filled with well used copies of the Standard Works of the LDS faith in Japanese and facing that sat Brother Sato on the living room couch in traditional yukata, hair snowy white, complimented with a week's growth of whiskers, triangular face, broad forehead. Then you gazed into his eyes. When you did so, almost everyone's first impression was, "Here's a true professor. This man knows what he's talking about," 

Scholar 

Brother Sato has always been a scholar. Born October 16, 1899, just two and a half months after LDS President Ezra Taft Benson, on the famous Tokaido (Imperial Road) in the village of Narumi.(now part of the major city of Nagoya, Japan), his grandmother pampered him as the chonan (firstborn) of his parents. As first born., he was to be heir of the family's home, a wooden two story yadoya (traveler's inn) located right on the Imperial Highway connecting Kyoto to Nikko, ancient capitals of Japan. Legend has it the Emperor lodged at their inn once.

The family lived on the second floor and the guests stayed on the first floor in traditional tatami (straw) mat rooms with shoji (rice paper) wall partitions. Japan was just in the throws of emerging from world isolation. The 186$ Meiji .Restoration had just begun 31 years before. 

Tatsui loved the railroads. Every evening, he would patiently wait at the Naruini train station for his father's return from his bank clerk work in nearby Nagoya 8 miles away. He would also play with the other children in the neighborhood at the nearby Buddhist o-tera (shrine): But when the children would build sand castles out of the carefully contoured and raked Zen Buddhist sand surrounding the shrine, the monk would scold them vehemently and whack them on their backs. Tatsui never did like Buddhism because of that. 

Young Christian Missionary 

In the village came a young Christian missionary; however, It was Tatsui's first contact with Christianity. The missionary was very poor, so much so that Tatsui felt sorry for him and gave him 10 baby chickens to raise. After only one year, however, the missionary moved to Nagoya, a short distance away, where Tatsui later learned he had married, but the missionary's parents had committed suicide.

Tatsui was quite weak when growing up. The doctor said it was due to a weak liver. But even though this reduced his stamina in vigorous physical activity, his mind was free to embrace knowledge. First he was placed in a private pre-school with a masterless samurai named Seran Takashima as teacher to learn Chinese characters (kanji) and classics. Takashima Sensei (teacher) was an old scholar of Confucianism. The textbooks were the four classics of Confucius which instilled traits of filial piety and ancestor worship in Tatsui. 

In 1906, Tatsui entered the Narumi Elementary School, where he was made president. of his first grade class, graduating in 1912. 

By this time, Tatsui had one younger brother and two younger sisters who were similarly raised. Tatsui entered the Aichi Prefecture Middle School in 1912. It was five miles from his home so his mother rose at 4 A.M. every morning to prepare breakfast and lunch and Tatsui rose at 5 to walk to the school. Sometimes he and his five school friends would buy imo (yams) for one or two yen, salt them, and put them in their pockets to eat. The bicycle was a form of transportation, too. He continued five years at this school until graduation in. March. 1916. 

"0.B." 

It was during his middle school days that Tatsui came in contact with an American reverend from Ohio of the Methodist protestant church who called himself "O.B." He would not disclose his real identity due to persecution of Christian faiths at that time. But Tatsui liked the association and was baptized at age 18. Tatsui states, "He put his hand in a bowl of water and patted my head. That was the baptism." Tatsui served as a. clerk for the church for about a year. 

While Tatsui attended this church and middle school, he developed an interest in English and studied it in school. Middle school was the equivalent of American .junior high and when graduation came, it was time to take an examination for higher education. Tatsui's mother supported him in further education and Tatsui took a test for a second level, high school but did not pass. There were eight levels of schools in Japan at that time, level one being the highest and most difficult to enter. 

Then the system of testing changed. A standard test for all high schools was introduced. Tatsui, with hearty support from his mother took the new examination. A letter came saying Tatsui had been accepted for higher studies at the Second High School in Sendai. Sendai was like a foreign country to Tatsui. He didn't know where it was. Located 260 miles north of Nagoya, it took a round-about trip on the then existing railways through Tokyo to get there. He arrived in September 1917 with his kori (back pack), however, and graduated March 1920. It was an experience clashing with. Sendai ben (dialect), particularly since Tatsui spoke Nagoya ben. 

Tohoku Imperial University 

He applied and was admitted to the Tohoku Imperial University also located in Sendai, where he immediately started studies in April, There he studied theoretical chemistry and met and took English classes from Professor Tsutsui Bansui, author of the lyrics to the hymn "Jojo no Tsuki," Professor Bansui's text was the works of Shakespeare! Through this fast immersion into the most difficult English, Brother Sato acquired a competent ability to both speak and read English.

While in Sendai, Tatsui visited and attended many Christian churches and helped some with interpreting or translation. But he really never affiliated with any of them. All the while Tatsui studied and lived in Sendai., unbeknownst to him, a small branch of worshippers who called themselves "Latter-day Saints" were holding religious services just 200 meters away from where Tatsui resided, This branch existed until the Japan Mission of the LDS religion was closed in August 1924 due to rising Japanese militarism. 

Shortly before Tatsui graduated with a B.C. (Bachelor in Chemistry) degree from Tohoku Imperial University, Professor Bansui introduced him to Miss Chiyo Akizuki, a graduate student of the Mivagi Girl's School in Sendai. Her father was Dean of a Technical College in Sendai. She was three and a half years younger than Tatsui and a perfect match. They were married on December 28, 1923 and Tatsui graduated from Tohoku Imperial University March 31, 1924. 

Immediately Tatsui was employed as an assistant researcher in the Chemical Institute at Tohoku U. He continued this employment until February 1925 when a math professor from the Miyagi Girls School for future elementary teachers in his home town of Narumi visited the sister school in Sendai and encouraged Tatsui to come teach at his school. Tatsui and Chiyo moved to Narumi for two years when the principal of the school told Tatsui he had to quit because Tatsui was teaching general education to the students rather than just special education to become elementary school teachers. 

So Tatsui moved back to Sendai where he commenced the same kind of teaching at the sister Miyagi Girls School there until February 1927 when he was dismissed for the same reason—teaching general education to his students rather than just preparing them to be elementary school teachers. 

Accordingly, Tatsui went back to his old professors at Tohoku Imperial University and was again employed as assistant researcher, this time in the Iron Material Research Institute in the Manchurian War then occurring in China, the gun barrels of the Japanese Imperial Army had been found inferior to the brass barrels of the Chinese and Tatsui’s research department were assigned with the task of finding a superior metal for gun manufacture.