Voices from the past: The oral histories of Orange County's and Wintersburg's Japanese Americans

Arthur A. Hansen at the Manzanar National Historic Site with park ranger historian Kristen Luetkemeier following his Feb.19, 2012, Day of Remembrance address regarding the 70th anniversary of Executive Order 9066.  (Photo by Patricia Biggs, Manzanar National Historic Site)

   Arthur August Hansen is Emeritus Professor of History and Asian American Studies at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF).  He is the immediate past director of the CSUF Center for Oral and Public History (COPH) and the founding director of COPH’s Japanese American Oral History Project.  He currently serves as a historical consultant at the Japanese American National Museum, holding the position of senior historian between 2001 and 2005. 

   Over thirty years ago, Orange County's Bowers Museum recognized important local history would be lost without the creation of a Japanese American Council and a concerted effort to record the memories of the Japanese American community that played an integral part in the County's and State's development.

   Historic Wintersburg introduces an exclusive multi-part interview with Hansen, who conducted many of the oral histories that paint a picture of Wintersburg's past, including those with Yukiko Furuta (Furuta home at Warner Avenue and Nichols Lane), Rev. Kenji Kikuchi (pastor at Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission and Church) and goldfish farmer Henry Kiyomi Akiyama (a congregant at the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church).

Could you please provide some background as to the origins and early development of the Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project?

    In 1981, the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, the county seat for Orange County, launched a series of community councils, one of which was the Japanese American Council (JAC).  That council was co-chaired by two second-generation (Nisei) members of pioneering Japanese American families in Orange County, Justice Stephen K. Tamura and Henry Kanegae. Under their leadership, the JAC formed a committee to oversee the Council’s stated commitment to “promoting an understanding and appreciation of Japanese American culture and heritage and the contribution of Japanese Americans to the history and development of Orange County.”  This History Committee was initially chaired by two other Nisei from pioneer Japanese American (Nikkei) families in the county, Charles Ishii and Paul Nagamatsu.

   In addition to spearheading a special event at the Bowers Museum on the evening of May 3, 1981, attended by 320 people and featuring an exhibition of photographs, documents, and artifacts acquired from the local Japanese American community, the History Committee laid the groundwork for an ambitious oral history project covering the community’s history.   

   The committee first invited representatives from the Oral History Program (renamed in 2003 as the Center for Oral and Public History) at CSUF—who in 1972 had begun a Japanese American Oral History Project anchored by an assortment of interviews with Orange County Nisei about their World War II West Coast exclusion and Interior West incarceration, including one with Fountain Valley’s Jim Kanno, the country’s first mainland mayor of Japanese ancestry—to conduct a couple of workshops explaining the procedures and value of oral historical methods in the reconstruction of a community’s past.  Next, the committee compiled an extensive list of Issei (immigrant-generation) and older Nisei (first U.S. citizen-generation) in the county to become project interviewees (or narrators).

   By November 1982, the JAC History Committee, now co-chaired by Villa Park’s Carol Kawanami (the U.S. mainland’s first female mayor of Japanese descent) and I, began meeting on a monthly basis and drew up ambitious plans for a wide variety of historical undertakings, one of which was transacting a series of oral histories with longtime residents of Orange County’s Japanese American community, most especially those Issei and Nisei men and women that the founding History Committee co-chairs had identified as prospective narrators.  It was further decided that the oral histories be collectively designated as the Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project to honor Justice Tamura, who had passed away on April 22, 1982.  This decision was made in recognition of his rise from roots in the local Japanese American community to appointment in 1966 by California Gov. Pat Brown as the first Japanese American appellate judge in the continental United States.

   A further boost for the fortunes of the oral history project came about during the spring and fall of 1983 when, under the resourceful and indefatigable leadership of two members of the History Committee, Dorothy Wing and Shi Nomura, the committee sponsored two photo days at the Bowers Museum.  These occasions turned up more than 500 photographs (which were copied and annotated and made the basis for a JAC photo-archive) and galvanized the historical energies of the entire JAC membership.  Moreover, many who showed up at the photo days with historical photographs documenting the historical experience of their family and geographical community agreed to serve as resource people to identify prospective interviewees for the oral history project and/or to themselves act as interviewees.

How many interviews were ultimately conducted as part of the project?

  

    Altogether, between 1981 and 1984, the Project amassed fifteen interviews: seven of them were bilingual (Japanese/English) interviews with Issei Henry Kiyomi Akiyama, Yukiko Furuta, Kyotaro Kaneko, Mine Yabuki Kaneko, Shizu Kamei, Maki Kanno, and Reverend Kenji Kikuchi; eight of them were monolingual (English) interviews with George Jiro Abe, Aiko Tanimachi Endo, George Fujii, Charles Ishii, Yoneko Dobashi Iwatsuru, Betty Oba Masukawa, Clarence Iwao Nishizu, and Yoshiki Yoshida. 

 Of these fifteen interviews, how many were ones in which you served as the interviewer?

    Five interviews, three of them with Issei (Henry Kiyomi Akiyama, Yukiko Furuta, and Reverend Kenji Kikuchi) and two of them with Nisei (Charles Ishii and Clarence Iwao Nishizu).

Did you conduct the Issei interviews with the assistance of a Japanese-speaking interpreter?

    Yes.  One of the JAC members, Yasko Gamo, was a Japanese citizen whose residence in the United States extended over a quarter of a century.  She also was then employed as a Japanese-language instructor at several Orange County community colleges.  She agreed to assist me as a translator during the multiple interviewing sessions with Mr. Akiyama and Mrs. Furuta.

What about the interview with Reverend Kikuchi?

    I did that interview in English, although Rev. Kikuchi’s wife, Yukiko Kikuchi, was in attendance at the interview and periodically translated my questions into Japanese for her husband.  Some years later, the transcript of the interview was translated into Japanese by a cadre of wives of Orange County-based businessmen from Japan.  These women, supervised by two of them who were especially fluent in English, Masako Hanada and Yukiko Sato, had been recruited to the project by Yasko Gama, a graduate from the University of California, Irvine (where her husband was a professor) with extensive family contacts in the county’s overseas Japanese business community.   

   In addition to acting as translators for the remaining four Issei interviews with Shizu Kamei, Maki Kanno, Hyotaro Kaneko, and Mine Yabuki Kaneko, Mrs. Hanada and Mrs. Sato oversaw the transcription, editing, proofreading, indexing, and typesetting work by their team of Japanese business spouses for all the project’s bilingual interviews and even some of the monolingual interviews.  Without the inspired and dedicated talents of these two remarkable women leaders—the first (Masako Hanada) a Japanese university graduate in the field of English literature and a published translator, the second (Yukiko Sato) a graduate from a Japanese university in econometrics with a master’s degree in linguistics from CSUF—the project would probably never have progressed beyond the preliminary stages of its development. 

Aside from these overseas Japanese women and the Japanese American men who first lead the JAC and its History Committee, were there others who contributed to the success of the Project?

    Yes indeed.  One of the goals of the project aside from collecting the oral history interviews was to bring together three Orange County groups who, historically, had not worked particularly closely with one another on community activities.  The first of these groups was the pre-World War II Japanese residents of Orange County; the second group consisted of Orange Countians of Japanese ancestry who made the county their home in the period after World War II; and the third group was comprised of members of the overseas Japanese community living and working in Orange County.   

   Prominent within the project from the first group were Hiroshi Kamei, Jim Kanno, Clarence Nishizu, and Grace Muruyama, while stalwarts in the second group were Myrtle Asahino, Gale Itagaki, Carol Kawanami, Shi Nomura, Michiko Seki, Iku Watanabe, Dorothy Wing, and Rae Yasumura.  

   In addition, the project was greatly aided by graduate students at CSUF (notably Marsha Bode, Toni Rimel, Russell Nowell, Diane Tappey, Alice Maxwell, Phil Brigandi, and Jeanie Corral) and staff members of the CSUF Oral History Program (Shirley Stephenson, Kathy Frazee, Dr. Gary Shumway, Dr. Michael Onorato, Dr. Debra Gold Hansen, and Garnette Long).  Finally, Linda Lau and Virginia Donahue both played a vital role in the project’s progress after the JAC in 1985 changed its institutional affiliation from the Bowers Museum to the Historical and Cultural Foundation of Orange County.

Was the Project featured in any public events?

   There were two such affairs held that were exceptionally noteworthy.  First, on March 31, 1984, the JAC sponsored a major event: A Tribute to the Issei Pioneers of Orange County.  Held at the South County Plaza Hotel in Costa Mesa, 660 people turned out to honor the historical contribution of Orange County’s pioneer Japanese Americans, thirty-eight of whom were in attendance. With the notable southern California television newscaster Tricia Toyota and the distinguished third-generation Japanese American (Sansei) Orange County dentist Ernest Nagamatsu as co-emcees, this event succeeded both in focusing attention upon the heritage and achievements of the county’s Japanese American population and in raising more than $25,000 to support the costs of its historical endeavors, most especially the oral history project.

   Two years later, on Nov. 22, 1986, another JAC event of considerable magnitude called the Nikkei or Japanese American Legacy of Orange County was held at the Emerald Hotel in Anaheim. As with the previous event in Costa Mesa, this one was also emceed by Tricia Toyota.  

   This event witnessed the presentation of three community-developed projects.  First and foremost was the presentation of the fifteen oral history volumes done with Issei and older Nisei members of the Orange County Japanese American community.  Second was the release of a published novel, The Harvest of Hate, an epic story of the World War II exclusion and detention experience of Japanese Americans written by a Caucasian woman from Orange County, Georgia Day Robertson.  As a mathematics teacher, Mrs. Robertson had accompanied nearly 2,000 Japanese Americans from Orange County to the Poston Relocation Center in southwestern Arizona.  

   Finally, this event saw the published results of a “Historic Building Survey,” prepared by Orange County historian Phil Brigandi, covering pre-1940 Japanese American-related private and public building sites throughout Orange County.   

Next:  Arthur A. Hansen talks about what was learned from the  Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project.

The Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission (above) and Church buildings were listed as number one on the Bowers Museum JAC's Historic Building Survey for Orange County, released in 1986.       

All rights reserved.  No part of the Historic Wintersburg blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.  

Welcome to the Peatlands: Farmers, Preachers, Tycoons, Oil Men and Outlaws

   Wintersburg was not a completely sleepy little village of farms and churches.  It was, after all, a frontier.  The latter part of the 19th Century and early part of the 20th Century saw the convergence of a truly unique assortment of people, destined to shape Southern California into a place unlike any other.

   Described as a "land filled with tules", "the willows," and the "peatlands," the Wintersburg area had been home to the Tongva for at least 9,000 years.  The peatlands and sea provided everything that was needed: game, shellfish, and warm sunny days.

Farmers and ranchers

   By the mid 1800s,  more white settlers were moving in to buy land from the Spanish ranchos.  A descendant of Orange County's Ross family describes the native Californians visiting her grandmother to share in the coffee and freshly baked biscuits.  "They never came empty handed," she recalls.  "Sometimes they would bring a young rabbit or a few quail and sometimes a wild duck." (Pioneer memories of the Santa Ana Valley, Vol. III)

 Horse thieves

   The ranchos made money from the sale of their land, however, not all Spanish and Mexican ranchers were happy to see the new pioneers, often turning out their cattle to graze on farming land.  And, horse thieving was a problem.  

Left: The Trial of a Horse Thief,  John Mulvany (1839-1906), Clay, Cosack & Co., Buffalo and Chicago, Library of Congress.

   The Ross family kept their horses "under lock and key so that they would have a mount when they had to go after horse thieves."  The settlers soon discovered that an enterprising local, Juan Diaz, was actually running a horse thieving ring and collecting rewards for returning horses he had stolen.  They brought him back to the livery in Santa Ana, and---in Western justice style--- "hung him by the rafters until he confessed..."

Hidden in the tules

   Farmers found they had to deal with more than cattle encroaching on their land.   In the December 18, 1894 edition, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported one Wintersburg farmer's plow unearthed a skeleton.  

   "...From what can be learned it is probable that the discovery will lead to the unearthing of a murder of years ago," reported the Examiner.  "The skeleton is in fair state of preservation, and is that of a comparatively young man.  One man who claims to have seen it states...that the bones belonged to a man that was murdered.  A few years ago, several people who had located on the ranch disappeared and no trace of them was ever found."  The Examiner---in typical journalistic fashion of its time---concluded the article by stating "the list of these persons cannot be found tonight."

Oilmen (and outlaws)

   It was about this time that we begin hearing about oil man Gray Garrett Southern.  Southern lived on the outskirts of Wintersburg near the Buck Ranch (vicinity of Edwards Street and Varsity Drive in present-day Huntington Beach).  The April 9, 1896 San Francisco Call reports Southern was found guilty for the murder of Mariano Cuero in the midst of a "drunken brawl" in October, 1894.  The Call previously reported Southern had been charged, held without bail, and taken by Sherriff Nichols to Los Angeles for safekeeping.

Left: The Los Angeles Herald provided a little background on Southern, found guilty of shooting a man who had crossed a "line he had drawn in the dust. Los Angeles Herald, April 9, 1896.

    Southern was sentenced to serve 12 years in the penitentiary, but managed to get a new trial after seven months and the case was dismissed.  By November 1908, he is back in trouble with the law.  The Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported Southern was charged with "shooting at Constable Langto of Wintersburg, with intent to kill."  Southern's wife, Nancy,  reported he "fired at her with a revolver and chased her to the house of a neighbor, half a mile distant."  Sherman Buck and his sister-in-law Mrs. Charles Buck responded to the call for help.

   The Examiner continued, "When Constable Langto and his party arrived at Southern's home (he) came out of the house armed with a shotgun and revolver...charging Langto and Buck with interfering in his private affairs, threatened to shoot Buck.  Langto attempted to pacify Southern, when the latter suddenly turned the gun in Langto's direction and fired at him point blank, the charge passing so close to Langto's head as partially to deafen him.  Buck sprang upon Southern, and, with Langto's assistance, Southern was overpowered, disarmed and taken to jail."  

   The Examiner also reported Southern's wife, Nancy, filed for divorce after the attempted murder.  They apparently worked things out, as a circa 1920s Orange County directory lists them together with a post office box on Wintersburg Road, where Southern owned land.

Tycoons

   As if this sort of behavior wasn't enough for farmers to contend with, in come the railroad tycoons, land barons and wealthy duck hunters.  Gun clubs began to sprout in the peatlands, starting a royal battle when the Bolsa Chica Gun Club dammed up the tidal flow into the Bolsa Chica wetlands.  There are reports of farmers (allegedly) sabotaging dredging equipment and filing legal complaints that the dams were a violation of maritime law.  The farmers repeatedly lost this battle (until the tidal flow was re-opened one hundred years later).  However, the gun clubs found out now and then they were not above the law.

   In a reckless display of bravado, wealthy French aviator Hubert Latham flew his plane, "Antoinette," over the Bolsa Chica Gun Club shooting ducks from the air.  Latham was the first person to have attempted to cross the English Channel in an airplane (unsuccessful, he also was the first person to land a plane on water).  

Left: Hubert Latham in Antoinette, circa 1911. This image may be from the air show at Dominguez air field in Los Angeles County. Photo, Library of Congress

   The December 23, 1910, Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported "the first duck brought down by the aviator was brought to Los Angeles by Count Von Schmidt and will be stuffed and presented to Latham as a trophy for making the first aviation hunt on record."  Everyone congratulated each other and then most likely retired to the club to eat roast duck.

   Two days later, the San Francisco Call reported Latham's stunt would make California "the first state in the union and the first government in the world to prohibit the hunting of wild game from air ships if the state fish and game commission has its way."  The commission stated Latham frightened "thousands of ducks and geese so badly that they have not yet returned to the marsh."  

   The Fish and Game Commission further stated they feared others would try to copy Latham.  "Within the year it might become the fashion to hunt ducks and geese in aeroplanes over all the state."  Awkwardly, M.J. Connell, reported by the Los Angeles Herald Examiner to be the president of the Commission, also was a member of the Bolsa Chica Gun Club.

Preachers

   Into the fray entered the Presbyterian and Methodist Evangelical preachers, who began spreading their message of faith and temperance to farmers and field hands in the peatlands in 1902.  The same tules that served as an out-of-the-way place to stretch or break the law, became a "gospel swamp" dotted with tent revivals, missions and churches.

Hubert Latham's mono plane over the Bolsa Chica surf on the day of his infamous airborne duck hunt.  (Photo, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, December 23, 1910)

Editor's note: Readers may enjoy "Hubert Latham's infamous aerial duck hunt over the Bolsa Chica: Part 2" at http://www.historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/03/part-two-of-our-interview-series-with.html

All rights reserved.  No part of the Historic Wintersburg blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.  

"Full of hope for a new life" in Wintersburg

ABOVE: Henry Kiyomi Akiyama at the Pacific Goldfish Farm, post WWII in 1945.  The Akiyamas "are formerly of Poston and report no difficulties in disposing of all goldfish they are able to deliver to the market." (Photo, UC Berkeley Bancroft Library) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   Henry Kiyomi Akiyama was one of Charles Mitsuji Furuta's best friends.  They worked together on the Cole Ranch off Gothard Avenue in Wintersburg (see Cole Ranch and the Universe Effigy, http://historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/02/cole-ranch-and-universe-effigy.html).  Charles and his wife, Yukiko, had arranged the marriage of Akiyama to Yukiko's sister, Masuko, and the newlyweds had lived with the Furutas for a while.  And, both tried goldfish farming (see Goldfish on Wintersburg Avenue, Feb. 11 2012 post).

   While Charles Furuta constructed small goldfish and lilly ponds on his property at Wintersburg (Warner) Avenue and Nichols Lane---purchased before the Alien Land Act of 1913---Akiyama first could only lease land.

   Akiyama later was able to construct a large hatchery on 40 acres in Westminster, at the site of the present-day Westminster Mall.  The Akiyama hatchery was so successful, others followed the model and Westminster began billing itself as the "Goldfish Capital of the World," even putting it on their post mark.

   Akiyama was born in 1888 into a family of nine.  He left Japan as a young man to avoid being drafted into the Imperial Army, arriving first in Vancouver, Canada.  He worked for six months at a sawmill in the Seattle area before making his way to his original destination: Orange County.  On the ship to North America, he wore the western-style suit he bought for the trip in Tokyo and carried little else in the way of belongings.  Akiyama was "was full of hope for a new life in America."  

   He had heard about Orange County from a relative who lived in Wintersburg, Tsuneji Chino.  Chino was operating an agricultural labor camp and Akiyama wanted to be in farming.  Chino's Wintersburg labor camp was in the area of present-day Springdale Avenue.

   Akiyama described the labor camp in an oral history interview conducted in 1982 with California State University - Fullerton history professor Arthur Hansen.

   "At that time, each landlord provided housing for the laborers; however, there was no bed provided. The workers just spread straw on the dirt floor and used a blanket to sleep on. There were about thirty people living in one house...the landlords provided poor housing," remembered Akiyama.  "After harvesting, each laborer rolled his own blanket and carried it away...for the labor, the fee was fifteen cents an hour and they worked ten hours a day. They had to work on Saturdays, too. Only Sundays were off." 

   Ninety-four at the time of his oral history interview, Akiyama recalls he "didn't mind so much hard work here, and he worked very hard. And his Caucasian employer (Cole) liked him and appreciated his hard work, so he was pretty successful."  Akiyama had worked consistently for three local farmers, George Crane, Ray Moore, and M. C. Cole.

   Akiyama recalls the beginning of the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission by Reverend Hisakichi Terasawa. 

   "He graduated from Cambridge University. He spoke English very well. He started the missionary work among the Japanese (in 1904)," recalled Akiyama.  Rev. Terasawa had taken Charles Furuta and his new wife, Yukiko, under his mentorship and later performed the marriage ceremony for Akiyama and his wife.

   Akiyama said many Japanese immigrants began learning about Christianity in Japan.  "Young people especially were interested in Christianity. There was an association called Rikkokai in Tokyo...They taught people going to the United States some facts about American life. So people had some knowledge of Christianity before they came to this country. And after coming here to Orange County, young laborers in the camp attended this church in Wintersburg."

   The Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission began meeting in a barn in Wintersburg in 1904 before the first mission building was built.

   "...Reverend Terasawa organized a group in the barn which was on the same property as the house he was renting," explained Akiyama.  "He made this barn into a gathering place for the Japanese, and on Saturdays and Sundays the young people gathered here since there was nowhere else to socialize."

   Akiyama started farming on the M.C. Cole Ranch on a crop-rent contract first under Chino's labor camp, with C.M. Furuta.  

   "Furuta took the part of horse farming and Mr. Akiyama did manual labor. When Mr. Chino moved to Talbert (Fountain Valley) in 1911, Mr. Furuta and Mr. Akiyama continued this kind of contract with Mr. Cole...when Mr. Chino left, Mr. Cole felt that he was too old to farm himself. So he proposed to Mr. Akiyama and Mr. Furuta that they take over his farm, and they did" until around 1914.  

   Furuta went to work his own land at Wintersburg (Warner) Avenue and Nichols Lane, while Cole invited Akiyama to stay and live on his ranch.  

   The Cole family began selling part of their Wintersburg land as oil production increased.  At that time, Akiyama had begun trying his hand at goldfish.  He "made a little pond and started to have goldfish. He found that they multiplied a lot, that so many goldfish were born in a pond. So he thought goldfish farming might be a good business."

   By 1927, Akiyama was able to lease 40 acres and construct a 20-acre goldfish pond.  Since he could not buy the land, Akiyama entered a deal with M.C. Cole's grandson; Akiyama would rent the land from Cole, for ten to twenty years--and pay off the land price.  The hatchery was later put in Akiyama's son Joe's name, since Joe was a U.S. citizen.  

   Akiyama hired a Caucasian manager and other Caucasian employees.  By 1938, he had sixteen employees and was able to buy 65 acres in Buena Park (also under his son Joe's name). 

   While his friend, Charles Furuta, was taken immediately by the FBI after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Akiyama did not have to evacuate until May 1942.  He's not sure why, but thinks it may have been because he had Caucasian employees or that he was not active in any of the Japanese associations.  He was 54 years old and had lived in the U.S. for over 30 years.

   Akiyama's employees tried to keep the business running after Akiyama was evacuated to the Poston, Arizona Relocation Camp.   "...this bookkeeper told him that during Mr. Akiyama's stay in the relocation camp, the government tried to find out any wrongdoings in his business," relayed Akiyama during his oral history interview.

   "But this bookkeeper told the government that Mr. Akiyama turned over all rights to manage the business to this manager and himself. He told the officers, 'Don't call Mr. Akiyama at the camp. Ask me any questions you have about the business.' And the government couldn't find any wrongdoing in his business." Akiyama remembers his Caucasian employees being on the receiving end of discrimination because they had been hired by a Japanese American.

   Akiyama lived in Block 12 at Poston, along with the Furuta family.  He grew koi, using water from the Colorado River.  And, he recalls going to a Native American reservation to get ironwood, which he carved into a chess set.

   When he returned from internment in 1945, the goldfish ponds were weedy and filled with frogs.  Akiyama and his son began the process of rebuilding.  The Pacific Goldfish Farm, an idea that originated in Wintersburg, put Westminster on the goldfish and koi aficionado map.  

   Henry Kiyomi Akiyama was one hundred years old when he died, eighty-one years after he arrived in Wintersburg.  His forty-acre hatchery continued until the 405 freeway and Westminster Mall swallowed up the land. But by then, the Akiyamas were one of Orange County's success stories.

LEFT: Masuko Akiyama, sister of Yukiko Furuta and wife of Henry Akiyama, at the Pacific Goldfish Farm in 1945.  (Photo, UC Berkeley Bancroft Library) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The interview with Henry Kiyomi Akiyama was conducted at his Westminster home by CSU Fullerton history professor Arthur A. Hansen for the Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project, jointly sponsored by the Japanese American Council of the Bowers Museum Foundation and the Japanese American Project of the California State University, Fullerton, Oral History Program.  Read the entire interview with Henry Kiyomi Akiyama at http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft4b69n873&doc.view=entire_text

© All rights reserved.  No part of the Historic Wintersburg blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.  

Preserving California's Japantowns: An interview with Donna Graves

ABOVE: An enamelware pot found buried in the street next to the Wintersburg Japanese Mission in 2016. Historic Wintersburg is a remaining survivor of a small nihonmachi in Orange County, including the Furuta Gold Fish Farm and Wintersburg Japanese Mission. (M. Urashima) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   Donna Graves is a historian and urban planner, and the Director of the Preserving California's Japantowns project.  Preserving California's Japantowns was the first statewide project to document historic resources from the State's pre-World War II Japantowns.  The project goal is to "reclaim the stories of buildings and landscapes of California’s historic Japantowns, including the majority of Nihonmachi that were transformed following WWII internment."  

LEFT: Laura Kitaji Domonguez-Yon, Donna Graves, Matt Bischoff and Jill Shiraki at Gilroy Yamato Hot Springs.  Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the hot springs were purchased by Kyuzaburo Sakata in 1938.  The hot springs--now part of the Henry Coe State Park--served as a hostel for Nikkei returning from wartime incarceration and for decades after as a gathering spot for Japanese Americans throughout Northern California.   The property is now being rehabilitated to restore public access. (Courtesy of Donna Graves)

   The term "Japantown" encompasses a wide range of communities, from large Nihonmachi in metropolitan areas to rural Japantowns with relatively small populations and more limited community facilities. Historically, most Nihonmachi included one or more of the following institutions and services: community halls, language schools, bathhouses, Buddhist temples, Christian churches, markets, nurseries, and other Nihonmachi businesses.

   Nihonmachi sites of interest in Orange County include the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church complex, see http://www.californiajapantowns.org/orange.html      Donna Graves comments on the importance of the Wintersburg site in this interview for Historic Wintersburg.

 What is the effort behind Preserving California's Japantowns?

   This project started as a number of people involved with efforts to preserve the three remaining Japantowns of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Jose asked ourselves "Where were the other Japantowns and what is left of them?"  Jill Shiraki and I are Preserving California's Japantowns project staff and our sponsor is the California Japanese American Community Leadership Council. We've received generous funding from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program. We surveyed nearly fifty historic Japantowns that ranged from smaller, rural communities to larger Nihonmachi and covered the state from San Diego to Marysville. Our main sources were the detailed community directories published by the major Nikkei newspapers. In two areas, Los Angeles and the Sacramento/Delta Region, we were fortunate to have local volunteers work with us on the survey.  In some rural areas, Nisei were absolutely critical in helping us find places that are only identified as PO boxes or rural route addresses in the directories.  It was an honor to work with all of them.

   We were surprised that some communities still hold many buildings and sites that are a part of Nikkei history, but even in places where there are historic buildings left, the memories of most pre-WWII Japantowns have been erased.  Our website, http://www.californiajapantowns.org/, describes our survey, highlights of a number of the communities we visited, and includes a searchable database of historic sites.

 Are there many Nihonmachi sites in Orange County?

   There are a handful, but they are scattered and their association with Orange County's Japanese American heritage is not visible.  For example, a very imposing building at 206 W. 4th Street in downtown Santa Ana held the offices of the local Japanese Association in the early 20th century, and a building that housed the Tamura law office still stands a few blocks away.  Our "sister" project, Japantown Atlas by Ben Pease, has a map based on our survey that shows what is still standing and what has been demolished.  You can find it at http://www.japantownatlas.com/map-orange.html

  

What has happened to the majority of Nihonmachi sites?

   Most have been demolished, which isn't surprising given that Orange County was largely rural in the era we studied.  So many acres of farmland and citrus groves have been paved over since then and were replaced by new developments.

What is the significance of the Wintersburg site (the Furuta home and Japanese Presbyterian Church complex)?

   People knowledgeable about Orange County history and Japanese American heritage agree that the Wintersburg Japanese Church complex is extremely significant. Our research for the statewide Preserving California's Japantowns survey confirmed that this is an unusually intact and significant collection of historic buildings with important connections to the history of Japanese Americans in Orange County.  Not only does the site have great local significance, it is a rare example of an intact complex of buildings that reflect a thriving immigrant population from the early 20th century.

 What can we learn by preserving these sites?

   Historic places like the Wintersburg Church give us an irreplaceable chance to understand what life was like for those who came before us.  And it is important for our historic sites to reflect the full breadth of our history, for those whose heritage it reflects, in this case for Nikkei.  But it is also important for all Americans to have the chance to understand the experiences of people whose heritage is different from their own. Especially here in California, where our population has always been so diverse, it's important to have places where we can honor, remember, and learn about the many communities that have shaped our state's history.

How were/are the Nihonmachi significant to other immigrant groups?

   We found that Nihonmachi were connected to other immigrant communities, and other "marginalized" people. Some places that were home to Nikkei were also settled by other working-class people of European descent, other recent immigrants and African Americans. One thing we noticed in our travels was that a number of historic Nihonmachi have continued to be home to newer immigrant groups and are now Latino communities.  These neighborhoods have their own history as "gateways" for people coming to make a new life in the United States.

What have other communities done to preserve Nihonmachi sites?

   One of my favorites is the Castroville Japanese Language School.  The Monterey JACL the County Parks Department and other agencies raised funds to renovate the historic gakuen and landscape the area around it as Japanese School Park as a youth center that now serves a primarily Latino neighborhood.  Some places have designated their historic sites as landmarks. The Buddhist Church of Oakland recently successfully nominated their beautiful church as a City of  Oakland landmark; this helps protect the complex as the neighborhood undergoes new development pressures.  

   The City of Riverside has one of the few Japanese American sites that hold the highest designation as a National Historic Landmark, the Harada House*, which was the subject of an important court case that challenged the discriminatory Alien Land Law. The City received funding from the California Office of Historic Preservation and hired me to work with them and students from UC Riverside to identify and document additional sites that reflect the larger history of Japanese Americans in that area.

What does a community gain by historic preservation?

   As our physical environment becomes ever more standardized and anonymous (e.g.,  strip mall), historic preservation reinforces a community's identity through the buildings and places and the stories they hold.  For cities and towns that once held a pre-WWII Japantown, historic preservation of these remnants is a way to deepen understanding of local history and make one more step toward redeeming a painful part of our history and reinforcing our nation's commitment to protecting civil liberties. 

RIGHT: The Buddhist Church of Oakland is one of a handful of California Buddhist churches still housed in their pre-war buildings. It was designed by Nisei George Shimamoto, also the architect of Buddhist churches in San Francisco and San Jose. Just a few years after the sangha was revived following WWII, the church faced the threat of eminent domain when the State of California announced plans to construct a freeway through the neighborhood in 1950. Church members deliberated over the right course of action and ultimately decided to move their church, which was cut in two and relocated three blocks north to its current location at 9th and Jackson.

 Learn more about Preserving California's Japantowns at http://www.californiajapantowns.org/

 

*The Harada House was named one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2020. Historic Wintersburg was named one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2014 and designated a National Treasure in 2015. It remains endangered.

© All rights reserved.  No part of the Historic Wintersburg blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.

Women in Wintersburg

Japanese women arriving at the "Ellis Island of the West," California's Angel Island Immigration Station.  By 1920, an estimated 6,000 to 19,000 Japanese "picture brides" were processed through Angel Island. (Photo, www.angelisland.org)

   Yukiko Furuta was not a picture bride and she did not remember meeting any picture brides in the area.  Her marriage was arranged by family and friends.

  C.M. Furuta--who had been living in America since 1900--traveled to Japan to meet his prospective bride.  "...One day this lady asked her to go to a public bath house with her," explains the translator for Yukiko Furuta's 1982 oral history interview with CSU Fullerton history professor Arthur Hansen.

   "When they finished taking the bath, this lady told Mrs. Furuta, 'Go home before me and if some guests come to your house, please serve them an ashtray and a cigarette set.' She didn't realize anything, but she went home," Yukiko recalled through the translator, "And, as this lady suggested, two men guests came to her house. One of them was Mr. Furuta and the other one was a go-between...that was the first time she met Mr. Furuta."

   C.M. Furuta was 31 and Yukiko Yajima was 17.  Like Yukiko, C.M. Furuta was originally from Hiroshima.  Her family was Samurai, but like many Samurai in the late early 20th Century, post Meiji Restoration, their financial situation was diminished.  The prospect of going to America with a man of good reputation was an opportunity for her to have a better life.

   "She says she was told by the other people that Mr. Furuta was a very good man," relayed the translator, "So if she would follow him, there would be nothing to fear and nothing to worry about. So, she trusted him and just came to the United States without any fear at all."

   They married in a traditional country wedding in Japan and then made their way to C.M. Furuta's home in Wintersburg, first arriving in San Francisco. 

  Yukiko didn't remember the exact date, "but remembers that they celebrated Christmas on the boat. They stayed at Reverend Terasawa's house (an Episcopalian, he would later become a founding pastor for the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission in 1904)... she came in a Japanese kimono.  Reverend Terasawa's wife took her to a Market Street store and bought her a Western dress to prepare her for the life here." 

   Yukiko recalls C.M. being very protective and riding her around perched on his bicycle, even though "it must have been very heavy for him."   She did not venture out on her own much, spending most of her time keeping house and later tending children at their home on Wintersburg Avenue.  The Furutas invited friends over on Sundays to play go.  Since C.M. did not drink sake with the men, they stayed in and played uta-garuta---a Japanese poetry game.  C.M. constructed a tennis court on their property, a sport Yukiko had enjoyed playing in Japan.  

The Furutas and friends playing tennis on their farm in Wintersburg, circa 1920. (Photo courtesy of the Furuta family)

   Later, C.M. and Yukiko became matchmakers.  C.M.'s good friend Henry Akiyama had seen a photograph of Yukiko's younger sister, Masuko, at the Furuta house.  Yukiko wrote to her parents, who gave their consent for her little sister to travel from Japan to San Francisco for the marriage. For a while, they all lived together in the same house in Wintersburg.  

   Both the Furutas and the Akiyamas later had successful gold fish hatchery businesses (see Goldfish on Wintersurg Avenue, http://historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/02/goldfish-on-wintersburg-avenue.html).

   About 60,000 Japanese--many picture brides--came through northern California's Angel Island Immigration Station.  Unlike C.M. Furuta, many Japanese men in America could not afford the trip to Japan to find a wife.  During the same time period, Greek laborers in Utah also began sending for picture brides.  For these men, sending a photograph and information about themselves to family or friends in the old country was the early 20th Century version of Match.com.   They only knew each other through letters and photographs, before meeting face to face.

   By 1920, Japan stopped issuing passports to picture brides due to its negative perception in the U.S.  By then, young Japanese Americans were beginning to figure out the American dating game.  Once again, the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church was a focal point in this new social scene.   Congregant Clarence Nishizu recalled in his 1982 oral history interview that although "most of us were young and still in our shy stages," the Wintersburg youth group attended local dances and social functions together, and most of them had dates.  

The oral history interview with Yukiko Furuta was conducted on June 17 and July 6, 1982, in the Furuta family home in Wintersburg (Huntington Beach) and  with Clarence Nishizu on June 14, 1982 by Arthur A. Hansen for the Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project, jointly sponsored by the Japanese American Council of the Bowers Museum Foundation [Historical and Cultural Foundation of Orange County] and the Japanese American Project of the California State University, Fullerton, Oral History Program. Read the full interview for Yukiko Furuta at http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft7p3006z0&doc.view=entire_text and the full interview for Clarence Nishizu at http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb009n977b&query=&brand=calisphere

All rights reserved.  No part of the Historic Wintersburg blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.  

Wintersburg - early 1900s

A remnant of the Southern Pacific rail line extending to the celery fields and packing plants for Smeltzer and Wintersburg. (Photo, February 2012)

     Houses of worship and schools have always been an indicator that a dusty spot in the road is transforming into a community.  The arrival of trains means the community has a future.

   In December 1904, townspeople gathered to discuss holding regular Sunday school in Wintersburg.  The Japanese Presbyterian Mission had already declared itself (see The Wintersburg Mission, Feb. 20, 2012 post), but the growing community needed churches of different denominations.  The armory building on the northwest corner of Wintersburg (Warner) Avenue and Gothard---which had been moved to Wintersburg from Fountain Valley---was used for meetings until the community's churches were constructed.

   The present-day Community United Methodist Church recalled this history during their centennial in 2005, "Several families had been traveling – not by car; those were very rare yet in Orange County, but on foot and horseback and wagons – to churches at many miles distance."

   Local historian Jerry Person writes in his 2005 Huntington Beach Independent column, Centennial Call, that "at this first meeting, a group of 15 people of different religious denominations (Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist) wanted to establish a community Sunday School...the little congregation of 15 grew to over 60 members in 1905."

   At that time, the Community United Methodist Church was known as the Wintersburg Methodist Evangelical Church.  One of the Wintersburg ME Church's early founders, Charles Applebury, recalled Sunday school students "met in the afternoon, in order to give the unheated building 'time to warm' from the afternoon sun."  According to Person, Sunday school seating was improvised from wooden planks placed on the inevitable celery crates and Wintersburg's "hearty pioneers used newspapers covered with clean packing paper for seat padding."  

   Wintersburg resident James Cain donated a house for the Wintersburg ME parsonage, which was moved to the northeast corner of Wintersburg and Gothard avenues.  Next, Henry Winters---for whom Wintersburg was named---donated the land for the Wintersburg ME Church, at the corner of Wintersburg and Gothard avenues.  

   The Wintersburg ME parcel also hosted a small one-room library for Wintersburg residents until the 1950s.  More than 100 years later, the iconic wooden church constructed on that site still stands.  It is now the Warner Avenue Baptist Church.

   Also in the early 1900s, "the school on wheels", Huntington Beach High School arrived in Wintersburg (before moving to its present-day location on Main Street in 1908).  Preceding this was Ocean View Grammar School, a wooden school house with bell tower, constructed in 1911 at the southwest corner of Stanton (now Beach) Boulevard and Wintersburg (now Warner) Avenue.  Demolished in the late 1960s, this is where the Comerica Bank building stands today. 

    Running down the middle of all this activity was the Southern Pacific Railroad line that served the Smeltzer and Wintersburg celery fields and packing stations.  It was a key factor in the birth of Wintersburg and the arrival of Japanese immigrants.

    U.S. Asians explains, "the development of irrigation in California opened the way  for intensive agriculture and a shift from grain to fruit and vegetable production.  Between 1879 and 1909, the value of crops from intensive agriculture skyrocketed from just 4 percent to 50 percent of all crops grown in California.  This transformation occurred under a market stimulus created by two key technological achievements of the period -- the completion of the national railroad lines and the invention of the refrigerated car.  Consequently, for the first time perishable fruit and vegetables from California could be sold almost anywhere in the United States."

   U.S. Asians continues, "As early as 1910, (Japanese farmers) produced 70 percent of California's strawberries, and by 1940 they grew 95 percent of fresh snap beans, 67 percent of fresh tomatoes, and 95 percent of the celery."

   As noted in The Wintersburg Mission, by 1905 twenty-five to thirty train cars left daily filled with Wintersburg celery.  Things were looking bright and people were putting down roots.

   Running parallel to Gothard Avenue, remnants of the rail line can still be found today in the railroad right-of-way.  While the "ghost line" ends abruptly, it's not hard to imagine the noise and commotion that accompanied the daily arrival of the train in Wintersburg.

Tracks to nowhere:  Looking north on the Southern Pacific Railroad line that led to Wintersburg in the railroad right-of-way off Smeltzer (now Edinger) Avenue. (Photo, February 2012)

All rights reserved.  No part of the Historic Wintersburg blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.