“Think of all the people that we have helped to make happy,” Elder Hideo Shio says as he and his wife, Sister Hiroko Shio, unroll a copy of a scroll, more than 20 feet long, that details names and relationships of family members for whom they have done research. The scroll includes hundreds of names and stretches across 39 generations, down to Elder Shio’s grandson. “I inherited the scroll from my father, a temple worker and stake patriarch who had a keen interest in genealogy,” Elder Shio explains. “I learned from him the importance of family records. I just kept his work going.” Because the Shios are descendents of Kanmu, the 50th emperor of Japan, they have been able to find records that cover centuries of ancestral history. On Elder Shio’s side of the family, that history includes the Taira, Iwaki, and Shio families. (Kanmu, also spelled Kammu, was crown prince of Japan from 773–781, then emperor from 781–806.)
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