Series Content Editor, Talin Hakopyan

Victor Cimarusti, 80, Los Angeles

By Assaad Georges/ Photo Luis Olguin

“ Don’t waste your life. Use your life, and use your brain. Don’t waste your life doing stupid things like a lot of young people do these days.”

Vic Cimarusti, whose family immigrated to the United States from Italy, tells about his time served in the Army in the Korean War, being stationed in Germany, and what it was like to come home as a war hero. At 80, Cimarusti has three children and living the single life, which he says keeps him busy. He goes to singles dances and meets women but says he will never marry again because it “cost him too much money.”

Toshiko Tominaga, 77, Okinawa, Japan

By Evan Velasquez/ Photos by Luis Olguin

“My son would tell me, ‘God made us. White people, Japanese people, black people are the same… You cut people and the blood is the same thing. The same blood comes out.’”

Having witnessed the devastation of the second world war from the island of Okinawa, Tokisho found love within the chaos. Marrying an African-American serviceman, despite not being able to speak the same language, exposed her to the world of racism that surrounded American society of the time.

While not being directly discriminated against, Tokisho recalls having to comfort her half-black children, who would cry due to the pressures they faced for being half-black in a hate filled America. Her solution was one that overlooked all of the prejudice they encountered, focusing on the positive and working to give her children the best life a single mother could give them.