Funeral service for the late Ayako Matsuda, an 87-year-old, Tokyo, Japan-born resident of Los Angeles who passed away on October 16, 2011 will be held on Saturday, November 5, 2011, 10:00 AM at Hollenbeck Palms Chapel, 573 Boyle Ave., Los Angeles, CA, officiated by Pastor Dwayne Nordstrom.
Ayako Matsuda was born, May 10, 1924, to Ashirho Kawasaki and Hisa Ustugui in Tokyo, Japan.
Her future husband Sumio served in the U.S. Army following the Korean War and was stationed in Japan. They met at the army’s educational center in Tokyo where she was employed. The couple were married in 1956 and shortly after moved to the United States.
Ayako became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1961.
She and her husband settled in Sumio’s hometown of Los Angeles where he began a four decades-long teaching career. Ayako encouraged her husband to attain a doctorate degree in English Literature at the University of Southern California and he later credited her with playing a vital role in his academic success.
Similarly, she arranged music lessons for her two children, supervised their studies and volunteered for their schools, all while imparting to them an ethic of hard work and quiet diligence.
Ayako was an avid tennis player and enjoyed weekly practice with her husband. In later years both attended ballroom dance classes. She enjoyed gardening, traveled regularly, attended her son’s classical music concerts and kept up on the latest films. Ayako embraced new things and enthusiastically took to learning to use her personal computer for desktop publishing.
In addition to many nieces and nephews both here and abroad, Ayako is survived by her two sons, Jack and Robert as well as her older sister, Tomoko Kawabata of Yokohama, Japan. www.fukuimortuary.com, (213) 626-0441
Ayako Matsuda
