Family and supporters of 442nd Regimental Combat Team veteran Noboru Kawamoto staged a small demonstration at the state Capitol on Tuesday to lobby for a change in state law to allow Kawamoto to live in the same adult care home as his wife.

Kawamoto, 95, lives in a community-care foster family home in Kaneohe while his wife, Elaine, lives in an adult residential care home in Punaluu. Their son Norman said the two are unable to live together because state law does not allow two private-pay patients to live at the same time in the home where Noboru Kawamoto now lives.

Norman Kawamoto said he tries to bring his parents together on weekends as often as possible, but said the 88-year-old Elaine finds the trip exhausting. There is an opening in Noburo’s care home now, but Elaine can’t move in because she is a private-pay patient, he said.

Kawamoto said he understands the community-care foster family homes such as the one where his father lives were designed primarily for low-income Medicaid patients and not for private-pay patients. However, the “unintended consequences” of the law that limits the type of patients in the homes is that a husband and wife who are both private-pay patients cannot live together.

Norman said his father, who is a World War II veteran who served in Italy, has lived in the Kaneohe community-care home since November 2014 and likes it there.

Rather than move him, Kawamoto is asking for an exemption from the existing law so that his mother can move to the Kaneohe community-care home. State lawmakers did approve such an exemption in 2009 to allow more than one private-pay patient in a community-care foster family home under certain conditions, but that law expired in 2011.

Last year lawmakers considered House Bill 600, which would have allowed two private-pay married people to live in the same community-care foster family home, but lawmakers deferred the bill. They have declined to hold a hearing for the measure so far this year.

State Department of Human Services Director Rachael Wong and state Director of Health Virginia Pressler co-authored a letter this week to state lawmakers saying that while they would like to see the Kawamotos live in the same care home, “we cannot … support changing a law to accommodate individuals’ preferences when reasonable options exist, and we hope to work with others who are also invested in uniting the Kawamotos to do this quickly so they can spend their remaining time together.”

Wong and Pressler wrote that the Kawamotos have other options, including having both of them move into an expanded adult residential care home similar to the home where Elaine Kawamoto now lives. There are 30 of those homes in Kailua and Kaneohe, according to the letter.

Another option would be to re-license the care home where Noboru Kawamoto now lives as an expanded-adult residential care home, according to the letter. Wong and Pressler said the home operator is aware of this option.