Rose DLG. Mondala, the Aging Office director, identified her as Sudo Toku, 72.
Mondala said they could not determine whether Toku was a tourist or a resident of the CNMI.
Except for her record at the manamko’ center, Toku had no other “history” on island, Mondala said.
She said her office and the Attorney General’s Office tried to identify the family or relatives of Toku but failed.
The AGO, she said, even asked the Japanese Consulate to assist in locating Toku’s family. They also checked on Guam if she had a family there.
Toku was hit by a car while crossing Beach Road in San Antonio on the evening of July 30, 2009.
Based on the record of the Aging Office, Toku was born in 1938 in Japan.
She was staying in San Antonio at the time of the accident.
Mondala said Toku wrote the name of her contact person, but this individual had no sufficient information regarding her background.
“She doesn’t have any relative when we checked her file,” Mndala said. “Why? How did she come here?”
Toku frequented the manamko’ center for more than eight years.
Mondala described Toku as a quiet person who seldom talked to the other senior citizens “because she didn’t speak English.”
But some manamko’ who spoke Japanese usually talked to her, Mondala said.
Toku, she added, spent most of her time at the center.
“We picked her up in the morning and returned her back to her house at night,” she said.
Walter Manglona, Aging Center program director, said Toku enjoyed walking around the center’s premises.
The only belongings she left at the center were her extra dress, a food container “and some small stuff.”
Toku was comatose after the accident and it was only in December when she was transferred from the intensive care unit, Mondala said.
She died on Dec. 26.
Before Toku’s death, Mondala said the manamko’ singing group visited her and sang Christmas carols.
“That was the last time that we saw her,” Mondala said, adding that when the news broke out that Toku had died “everybody at the center cried.”
Mondala said the manamko’ will be at the Commonwealth Health Center morgue at 9 a.m. on Friday to offer their prayers to Toku.
“I am inviting the community and the Japanese nationals to pay tribute and attend the burial of Toku on Friday,” Mondala said.
