*Updated April 2017*
"...those not acquainted with the West Coast conditions in the spring of 1942 could hardly grasp the significance and faith revealed in these messages."
The Sunday Before, May 1945
Theologian E. Stanley Jones wrote a forward to a little-known mimeographed collection of sermons by West Coast Japanese American clergy, The Sunday Before, delivered prior to the community's forced removal from the West Coast. Jones--himself a Methodist missionary nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award--observed in 1945 that he saw "a spirit meeting disaster in a triumphant way and making it into something else."
Among the sermons recorded is one by the Reverend Sohei Kowta, clergy at the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church from 1938 until forced removal from California in 1942. Reverend Kowta and his family lived in the 1910 manse (parsonage) next to the Mission building.
Reverend Sohei Kowta
The Sunday Before includes a preface to the sermons, describing each pastor who wrote it. Reverend Kowta's description was written about his time in Wintersburg.
"He has no gray hairs; he wears a short stubby moustache; his eyes are sharp, but ever have an infectious smile of both eyes and mouth. His good-natured banter lightens up the sometimes too solemn meetings of the church federation."
"He is probably one of the best English speakers amongst Issei preachers," the description continues. "At the same time, he puts his main point over in the old style; it is suggested rather than hammered home; it is left 1n the background to be sensed by the imagination rather than to be analyzed with words."
The Kowta family
Reverend Kowta's children recently provided Historic Wintersburg with memories of living at the manse in Wintersburg Village.
"I remember the very high ceiling in the bedroom (of the manse), which seemed like a social hall," recalls Tadashi Kowta, the eldest of the Kowta children. "When I visited the manse about 10 to 15 years later, I bumped my head on the ceiling of one of the back rooms."
"The Church was painted white and it stood out in the neighborhood, since there were no high rise buildings. The area was flat with farmlands," remembers Tadashi Kowta. At the time, the Furuta children were adults in their twenties and other children to play with were scattered throughout the farmlands. Tadashi Kowta particularly recalled the Akiyamas, Furutas, Kanegaes, Kannos, and Nitta families.
"The Church had a large backyard," Tadashi Kowta relays. "So we raised animals, such as sheep, mallard ducks, chicken, etc. Next door neighbors were the Furutas with their gold fish farm, which we visited periodically."
LEFT: Tadashi Kowta, 83, at a Shinnenkai (lunar New Year) celebration in Little Tokyo historic district, Los Angeles, California. (Photo, February 2, 2013) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Tadashi Kowta remembers "a slaughterhouse very close to the church." This would have been the butcher recalled by Yukiko Furuta in her 1984 oral history as MacIntosh's Meat House, on what is now Nichols Lane.
Tadashi Kowta--says he "faintly remembers the church services, which I attended faithfully"-- and described a favorite Christmas morning at the manse.
"One Christmas, probably when I was 9 or 10, I received a baseball glove from my parents," Tadashi Kowta recalls. "It was one of my joyous moments and I climbed onto their bed while they were still in it and pounded the glove with glee." He remembers taking the glove to the Ocean View Grammar School to play softball.
The Kowtas visited Japan before moving to their new ministry assignment in Wintersburg, where the Kowta children were enrolled at the Ocean View Grammar School. Tadashi Kowta explains his mother was frail and they lived with his grandparents for two years so his mother, Riyo, could receive help raising Tadashi, his brother, Makoto, and sister, Hiroko.
"When we came back from Japan, I was placed in the first grade at age 8 years," writes Tadashi Kowta, who says his favorite class was mathematics. "I have jokingly stated that I was the dumbest kid on the block for I was in the first grade for the third time! I attended the first two grades in San Francisco, where I was born, then to Tokyo and Shizuoka for two years. I was placed in the first grade, since I did not know Japanese. Then to Ocean View's first grade, since I did not know English. I soon moved up to the third grade."
Tadashi Kowta also attended the Costa Mesa Japanese Language School associated with the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church, where his father, Reverend Kowta, also fulfilled the role of superintendent. The language school was on land donated to a member of the Japanese community by Fanny Bixby Spencer (story at http://historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/09/fanny-bixby-spencer-living-outside-of.html
December 1941
"On December 7th or 8th, the FBI came to interrogate my father, since he was the pastor, superintendent of the Japanese Language School, and probably by inference, a leader of the Japanese community," remembers Tadashi Kowta. Reverend Kowta is remembered as quietly summoning the strength necessary to support his family and his congregants.
"I did not know who he was," says Tadashi Kowta of the FBI, describing that day at the manse, "but the door to my father's study room was closed for what I thought was several days. In reading my father's diary after his death, I learned that it was only a day."
LEFT: The Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian manse, adjacent to the Mission, circa 1910-1911. (Photo courtesy of Wintersburg Presbyterian Church) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
"Nevertheless, during that time, I remember sitting by the chicken coop tearfully wondering what was going to happen to me, our family--Japan and the U.S. were at war, my mother was frail," Tadashi Kowta recalls the worry. "I wondered whether I had to take responsibility for the family, if they did something to my father, questioning whether I could assume that kind of responsibility for I was only 11 years old!"
"In May 1942, we left Ocean View Elementary School," Tadashi Kowta describes their forced removal in May 1942, for an unknown future in confinement.* Teachers and children came to say goodbye.
"The whole school seemed to have come to say, 'good bye' to us," says Tadashi Kowta, of Ocean View Grammar School, reminiscent of others' oral histories about Huntington Beach High School at the time of their forced departure. "Even though I did not know where we were going, it felt nice to receive a send off."
The Sunday Before
For one of his last sermons before internment, Reverend Kowta traveled to the Japanese Union Church in Little Tokyo, for the installation of Reverend Donald Toriumi. His message--memorialized in the booklet, The Sunday Before--is likely one he delivered to his congregants in Wintersburg and at a meeting with clergy in Westminster near the end of April, 1942.
"Ever since the problem of evacuation became public," expands Reverend Kowta,"the Japanese people have been very inquisitive about it. 'Where does the government want us to go?' 'When does the government want us to move?' How does the government move us there?' 'How will the government treat us there?'
Reverend Kowta invoked the lessons of hope and self-sacrificing love, telling his congregants to prepare themselves spiritually as well as materially for confinement, and that "every crisis is a testing time of one's character."
RIGHT: Rev. Kowta was the guest speaker at a meeting of Presbyterian clergy in Westminster in late April, 1942. Westminster clergy had helped with the founding and development of the Wintersburg Japanese Mission in 1904 and asked Rev. Kowta to speak regarding the Japanese American community's departure for incarceration. At the time of this article, Rev. Kowta indicates they do not know where they will be confined. His reported comments are similar to the sermon in The Sunday Before. (Santa Ana Register, April 21, 1942)
"In this critical hour, the spiritual anguish of the Japanese people is undescribable, their mental perplexity unsoluable, their economic loss inestimable. The mighty economic structure which the Issei have constructed with their sweat and blood during these past several decades is fast crumbling down to its foundation," Reverend Kowta acknowledged the loss. "We shall not foolishly look back, and weep and mourn, and turn ourselves into pillars of salt...but, with faith, hope and love, we shall go wherever God wants us to go."
Poston
"I remember the dust storms and the deep dry powdery dirt in which our feet sank when we walked," recalls Tadashi Kowta, of the Colorado River Relocation Center. He covered up the knot holes that let wind and sand into their barrack with the ends of tin cans.
He remembers his father obtaining a large tank in which to grow carp, providing the blood to his mother, Riyo, as a means of strengthening her health. The majority of those at Poston and other confinement camps began producing food as soon as they were able, to supplement the poor food provided by the government.
Tadashi Kowta participated "in the youth worship services and attending the adult services, I believe, in the auditorium. We watched the movies outdoor and we took a charcoal heater to keep us warm. I was in the Boy Scouts and was the flag bearer, since I was the only one with a full uniform. I swam backstroke in the 'canal' and placed in the swim meet."
Reverend Kowta, who had attended a theological seminary in Dayton, Ohio, began to help organize the various denominations of clergy into interfaith support for the displaced community, serving on Poston's interfaith council. The Sunday Before publication notes remarkably positive correspondence from Reverend Kowta about his work in the trying circumstances of confinement.
"From the camp he writes: 'It is a real joy for me to be on the job day and night. Very fortunately, the American officials are very thoughtful and understanding. We get along splendidly.'"
In turn, the federal government's November, 1945, Final Report for the Colorado River Relocation Center Community Activities Section notes,"The maintaining of a united church was made possible by a very tactful moderator, Reverend Sohei Kowta, of the Presbyterian Church..."
The return
By 1945, the Kowtas left Poston and returned to the Little Tokyo district in Los Angeles, to assist at the Japanese Union Church. Once again, Reverend Kowta was a leader in an interfaith and multicultural outreach effort in what had become Bronzeville.
"Bronzeville in downtown Los Angeles existed for about three short years in the 1940s," summarizes the history website www.bronzeville-la.com. "The area known as Little Tokyo transformed into the African American enclave of Bronzeville during World War II after Japanese Americans were evicted from their West Coast homes and placed into United States confinement camps."
"As World War II progressed, Los Angeles faced a labor shortage in the war industries, and a huge migration of African Americans, mainly from the Deep South, started to flood the Southland to seek employment. Thousands ended up in the vacant Little Tokyo buildings because most of Los Angeles had restrictive housing covenants that barred people of color from living in white neighborhoods."
During the war years, the Pilgrim House for the African American migrant community set up space in the Japanese Union Church building, which also housed belongings of the Japanese Americans in confinement. In 1945, as Japanese Americans began to return, the Pilgrim House established the Common Ground Committee "to help promote a favorable atmosphere for returning Japanese Americans and to foster positive racial interaction among the African Americans, Japanese Americans and Latino Americans in the area."
LEFT: The original Japanese Union Church building in Little Tokyo. It remains standing in Little Tokyo, off Judge John Aiso Street. Today, it is the home of the East West Players, a nationally recognized Asian American theater organization, eastwestplayers.org (Photo, National Park Service)
The National Park Service notes Reverend Kowta's efforts to help Japanese Americans returning from confinement in Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California. "Rev. Sohei Kowta...recognized the need to establish a center to aid Japanese Americans returning from the concentration camps. Along with the Presbytery and the American Friends Service Committee, he established a resettlement center... known as the Evergreen Hostel, and Rev. Kowta conducted religious services for Union Church members and other residents."
Tadashi Kowta thrived upon the return to California. He attended Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles, participating in basketball, track, was elected class officer and maintained perfect attendance. From there, he attended Occidental College, Los Angeles City College, and graduated from California State University Los Angeles. By 1953, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in military intelligence in Japan. On his return, he graduated from the School of Social Work at the University of Southern California and began working for the Veterans Administration.
Reverend Kowta continued his work and association with the Union Church until his passing in 1963. The example of selfless community service he demonstrated in Wintersburg, Poston, and Little Tokyo has continued. Tadashi Kowta was ordained an elder in 1962, served as chair of Social Justice, Superintendent of Sunday School, 27 years as Clerk, as a moderator for national conferences, and still serves as a volunteer member of the Little Tokyo Historical Society.
Today, the children of Reverend Sohei Kowta and Riyo Kowta--who lived to the age of 103-- remain in California. Tadashi, 87, in Los Angeles County, Hiroko, 83, and Makoto, 85, in northern California.
WITH GRATITUDE: Special thanks to the Kowta family for sharing their memories and adding to our understanding of life in Historic Wintersburg.
*February 19, 2017, is the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which prescribed areas along the West coast as military exclusion zones and directed the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans.
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