People

: Akio "Jim" Yoshihara; Akio “Jim” Yoshihara was born August 8th, 1939 in Venice, California. He and his father, Yasutaro Yoshihara, his mother, Kukimo (Ishii) Yoshihara, and two older siblings moved to Lafayette, Colorado in 1948. He eventually married his late wife, Maryann, in 1962, and the couple raised two daughters in Lafayette. In February 1942, two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Yoshihara family was forced to assemble in Santa Anita Park, a racetrack in north Los Angeles, for several weeks and were eventually forced to blindly travel by train to Colorado and interned at Granada Relocation Center, better known as Camp Amache, for three years. Once in Lafayette, the family began farming and opened Lafayette Florist in 1949. Jim eventually severed in the U.S. army and then graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art from Colorado State University in 1966. Jim opened his own florist business in Boulder, Colorado and worked in marketing. He is retired as of 2024 and enjoys spending time with his children, grandchildren, and other members of the Lafayette community.

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