Chester Munetada Murakami

Chester Munetada Murakami came into the world on March 24, 1923 in Seattle, Washington, the only son and youngest of three children born to Tadaichi (Charlie) and Hamano Murakami. His sisters, Tamiko and Mitsuko, reportedly spoiled their little brother.

When Chet turned six, his family moved from Washington Street to 114 - 22nd Avenue. He remembers this because he had two birthday parties. The first was with friends in his old neighborhood where everyone spoke Nihongo, or Japanese. After they moved, he celebrated again with newly-found friends, although he told his mother: "these kids don't understand a word I'm saying and I don't understand them!" It didn't take long, however, for Chet to learn English as a student at Washington Elementary.

On Sundays Chet's father went fishing in his boat and often Chet would go along. During these years, Chet's steadfast companion was Ripp, a stray puppy his family adopted. By the time Ripp was full grown, he would stand on his hind legs to greet Chet's mother and knock her off her feet. A scrappy dog and true friend, Ripp earned a warm spot in Chet's heart forever.

When he was older, Chet helped out at Cherry Dye Works, the family business. In the late afternoons, he and his father would deliver cleaned and pressed clothing wrapped in tissue to customers. Sometimes it was hard to see Chet behind all the clothing he was carrying, so people would say, "hey, who's that?" Then as he peeked from behind the stack, "Oh, it's Charlie's boy!"

Chet attended Garfield High School where he probably liked Math, Cars and Girls, but most likely not in that same order. During his senior year, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and Americans began expressing concern and mistrust of the Japanese living among them. Anticipating some kind of wartime internment for himself and Hamano, Charlie counseled Chet and Mitsuko about how to run Cherry Dye Works in their absence. When U.S. Executive Order 9066 was issued, Charlie was shocked to discover his children, who were U.S. citizens, were not excluded from the evacuation mandate. By this time, Tamiko had returned to Japan, where she had spent much of her childhood, raised by her grandparents.

The Murakami family sold their fully furnished home, car and business. On May 14, 1942, after packing up and saying goodbye to Ripp, Chet locked the door for the last time at 114 - 22nd Avenue.

A new chapter in Chet's life began at Puyallup's Camp Harmony. In a college essay he wrote a year later, he said life was almost unbearably boring because there were no sports or quiet places to read. For Chet's father, the stress of losing his business and the uncertainty of Camp life proved overwhelming. He suffered a heart attack and died in August, not long before the entire population at Harmony was uprooted again and moved to the permanent internment camp at Minidoka near Hunt, Idaho. It was a sad journey by train for Hamano, Mitsuko and Chet, without their father. Their new home was in Barracks #15.

After a few months in Minidoka, Chet realized he needed to plan for his future. He wrote letters, filled out questionnaires and sent telegrams to Washington D.C. Finally in January 1943, he was granted a release from Minidoka to pursue an engineering degree at the University of Utah. He wrote: "As I glided out of Hunt in a De Soto that Sunday morning, I felt as though I was sitting on top of the clouds. I could go to the movies... or do anything within reason at any time."

Chet would spend two years at Utah before returning to Seattle with his mother and transferring to the University of Washington where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. After graduating, he worked for a year in Detroit. In 1948 was hired by Boeing and returned to Seattle, this time for good.

That same year, Chet tried skiing for the first time. He said that his friends left him on the bunny slope and didn't come back until lunch time. This did not discourage Chet. He sought out Nobi Kano, who gave him lessons. In 1950, Nobi, Chet and a few others re-established the Rokka Ski Club, which had been active before the War. The organization was comprised mainly of Japanese Americans who enjoyed the sport of skiing. It was this sport and Rokka that brought Chet together with his future wife, Martha (Marti) Fukuma. Marti was already an experienced skier who often went to the mountains with her girlfriends. She joined Rokka, and Chester swept her off her feet; fortunately they weren't on skis at the time.

Chet and Marti were married on February 15, 1953 and honeymooned in Victoria, B.C. Their first daughter, Lynne, was born in May, 1954 and 15 months later a second daughter, Debbie, was born; Rich arrived in 1958. Chet could hardly wait to get them into their first pair of skis, but he patiently held off until each child turned 4 years old.

Chet's rule of thumb was you should never teach your own children how to ski. Let someone else do it. He signed Lynne up for lessons at Rokka but complained about the class. The instructor, Shig Omori, told him, "if you don't like it, you should teach it yourself." Chet replied that he wasn't skilled enough to teach, but Shig said they'd show him how. After telling Shig he was crazy, Chet had second thoughts and took him up on his offer.

In 1962, Chet passed his instructors exam with the Pacific Northwest Ski Instructors Association (PNSIA). Chet was an instructor with Rokka for many years and served as the ski club president in the 1960s. He was co-director of the ski school for more than 30 years, leading instructor clinics and helping many instructors prepare for the certification examinations. He continued to be involved in the club and school well into his eighties. His guiding philosophy throughout the decades was to help people safely enjoy the sport of skiing while appreciating the beauty of the mountains and respecting the power of nature. In 2007, Chet was inducted into PSIA - NW's "Skiing Legends" for his significant contributions to the sport.

Every year once spring skiing was over, Chet would start getting his boat tuned up for the fishing season.

Like his father, Charlie, Chet was at home on the water. He loved the sport of salmon fishing and said there was nothing better than watching the sun come up over the Sound with lines in the water hoping to catch a big King.

Chet's other passion was engineering. It defined who he was: logical, data driven, and accurate. If anyone had the experience of getting into an argument with Chet, they recognized sooner or later that they weren't going to win. At Boeing's Aerospace division, Chet worked on projects like Dyna Soar, Minuteman, the Lunar Rover and Space Shuttle. He survived the infamous Boeing Bust of the early 1970s because he was an engineer who could write. Week after week, Chet saw desks emptied and familiar faces disappear. But his work continued because he was assigned to numerous proposals aimed at securing new business. Chet had planned to work until he was 65, but a heart attack in 1975 and bypass surgery 10 years later seemed to be telling him that life was too short to spend all his time at work. He retired from Boeing in May 1986 at age 63, after a career of nearly 38 years.

Neither the heart attack nor the heart surgery kept Chet from skiing, fishing or enjoying life in general. But it was his heart, ultimately, that simply didn't have the strength to keep going at age 89. It was a difficult realization for everyone - family, friends and Chet, himself. For once, the things that he believed in, science and technology, would not win. In his final days, he spent time reminiscing with friends and family about great ski runs, fishing tales and vacations. He made new friends among the staff at Keiro and he enjoyed visits from old friends. He went peacefully in his sleep, with family members holding his hand. "That," said Marti, "was a good life."