Utao Waki of on Mar 12, 2010 (MIS Veteran)
deeply loved by his family and friends, passed away on March 12, 2010. Utao was born January 5, 1922 in to Kurasuke Shimizu and Kazuno Kawahara. After his father died Kazuno married Kenshiro Waki. After being honorably discharged from the United States Army as a Sergeant at the end of World War II, he worked on his family’s farm in . Inheriting the farm’s lathe led to his profession as a machinist and later an injection mold designer/maker as well as a passion for scratch building HO scale brass locomotives. Utao’s skill as an ultimate craftsman became known nationwide in part because of an article in the national publication “Model Railroader” in 1961. At the time his “Big Boy” locomotive model was considered the pinnacle of model railroad scratch building. Utao’s models are still coveted today by collectors. He married Yasuko Bessie Amano on March 12, 1954. He worked at Geneva Steel in the early 1960’s and as a machinist in , until 1965 when he, Bessie, and his sons moved to . He was an exceptionally hard worker maintaining multiple jobs while raising his family