Toranosuke Fujimoto was born July 11, 1882, and grew up in Kokawa, a town in the Wakayama Prefecture in Japan. In 1902 he emigrated to the United States, where he lived in Washington and Orange County, California before settling in Riverside, California. He also adopted the name “George,” as Americans had difficulty pronouncing his first name. In 1911, Fujimoto married his wife Suna and the couple became farmers in Riverside, raising chickens and growing strawberries and walnuts, along with their six children. George Fujimoto, sometimes referred to as George Fujimoto Jr., was born on January 2, 1921, and was the couple’s first son and fourth child out of six.

During World War II, on March 11, 1942, Toranosuke was arrested by the FBI, along with many other Japanese American men in Riverside, and incarcerated until July 7th of 1942. On May 23rd, a few months after Toranosuke was arrested, George, his mother, and his siblings were all forcibly removed to the "Poston Relocation Center," an incarceration camp located in Poston, Arizona. Toranosuke joined the family after he was released from incarceration, and he spent the following four years at Poston, becoming a block manager. He left the camp in June of 1946, as one of the last detainees to do so, and returned to his Riverside farm with his wife.

George remained at Poston until 1943, when he was granted permission to leave the camp along with his sister and her husband. They relocated to Des Moines, Iowa, where George worked at a photography shop for eight months before being drafted in the U.S. Military. He was assigned to the Military Intelligence Service Language School where he took intensive Japanese before serving as a translator in occupied Japan from November of 1945 until May of 1946. George eventually inherited the family farm, which he ran until the mid 1960's with his wife Masako and their children. After his retirement George and Masako moved to Ferndale, Washington, where he still resides.