The Furuta farm, Wintersburg Mission and the Alien Land Law

The San Francisco Call headlines the Webb-Heney Act, which put California at odds with the Wilson administration and Californians at odds with each other.  The 1911 U.S. - Japan Treaty had established the right for Japanese to own or lease property for residential and commercial use. (Image, San Francisco Call, May 2, 1913)

   There simply is no easy way to convey the political turmoil that faced Wintersburg's immigrant farmers in the years leading up to 1913.  It was painful.  The kind of thing we don't talk about much, but should.  Today, a century later, it's an important civil liberties lesson for future generations.

   It's part of what makes the Historic Wintersburg site so rare.  

One of two Issei-owned properties in present-day Huntington Beach, the Furuta family home was built in 1912 on land owned by C.M. Furuta.  One year later, the Alien Land Law was enacted.  (Photo, September 2011) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   That Charles Mitsuji "C.M." Furuta and Reverend Hisakichi Terasawa were able to purchase five acres for the Furuta farm and Wintersburg Mission site was a feat of perseverance.  That Tsurumatsu "T.M." Asari was able to purchase land for the Asari market, farm and goldfish hatchery on Wintersburg Avenue, a small miracle.  

   In his 1982 oral history interview for the Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project, Henry Kiyomi Akiyama told his interviewers Arthur A. Hansen and Yasko Gamo that these two properties were the only Japanese-owned Wintersburg properties he knew of prior to the Alien Land Law of 1913. 

   Purchased between 1900 and 1909, they do appear to be the only properties in present-day Huntington Beach owned in the early 20th Century by Issei.  The only surviving extant property is the Furuta-Wintersburg Mission site at Warner Avenue and Nichols Lane.*

 Webb-Heney Act
   California's Webb-Heney Act (Alien Land Law of 1913) prohibited "all aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning land and prohibited their leasing land for more than three years.  Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Asian Indian immigrant farmers were ineligible for naturalization under U.S. immigration laws.  White, African American and Filipino aliens were not affected.

   Proponents of the Act used early common law as a basis for their complaint, reverting to pre-American Revolution feudalism.  "An alien could acquire real property by gift, purchase or devise, but his rights in the property were subject to forfeiture by the crown..."(Sei Fujii v. State of California)

  

Excerpt from an editorial statement by Cornell-educated attorney Thomas V. Cator to the San Francisco Call.  The Call supported Cator's contention there were constitutional issues.  Those embroiled in the debate were not shy about characterizations of race and ethnicity. (Image, San Francisco Call, May 2, 1913)

 Protests
    Assemblyman Bloodgood--a Republican-Progressive from Inglewood--sought an exemption for farm leases. Some accused him of placating big farming and land interests.  

   U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan traveled to California at the direction of President Wilson to tour Japanese farm communities and rural schools; he saw successful farm enterprises and close to 100 percent enrollment in schools among the Japanese community.  Speaking to the California Legislature in 1913, Bryan urged cooperation between the federal and state government.

   William Carter, General Secretary of the International Peace Forum visited Sacramento, urging caution in the interests of world peace.   A delegation of land owners from the Island Delta District near Stockton defended the Japanese farm lessees from their region, traveling to Sacramento to to voice their protest "against the passage of any alien land ownership bill that would affect the value of property in San Joaquin County."  

Dr. Juichi Soyeda, Associated Chambers of Commerce of Japan and Japanese American Society of Tokyo, and Tadao Kamiya, Tokyo Chamber of Commerce, on a visit to the United States. (Photo, Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection, June 22, 1913)

   Dr. Juichi Soyeda--a Japanese attorney delegated by the Chambers of Commerce of Japan and the Japan America Society to study the Alien Land Law--was asked to speak at the Publishers Association of New York in 1913.   As reported by the New York Times, Dr. Soyeda Sure That in the End California Situation Will Be Settled Amicably (June 26, 1913), a representative of the Publishers group said they did not share the opinions of the California legislators and extended "only the most cordial feelings" to the Japanese.

   "The thinking men in Japan are well acquainted with the history of the relations between this country and Japan, and of the instances of American fair play which we have experienced," said Soyeda.  "The negotiations of the California question are still going on between Washington and Tokio.  I cannot but think that the outcome will justify the United States in the light of Christianity and humanity."

   The San Francisco Call took a stand to counter those who opined Japanese posed a social or economic threat, stating it was not based on facts.  The Call stated there were 158,360 square miles in California, of which the Japanese owned only 20 square miles after a 50 year-presence in California.  In a half-page statement, May 1, 1913, the Call reasoned, "it will take the Japanese 395,900 years to own California."  In the end, these efforts failed and the Alien Land Law passed.

The "Plain Statement of Facts About Japanese Immigration" published by the San Francisco Call, May 1, 1913. (Image, San Francisco Call, May 1, 1913, Chronicling America)

In Wintersburg
   Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission founder, the Cambridge-educated Reverend Hisakichi Terasawa, had encouraged local Japanese to purchase property and put down roots.  C.M. Furuta and T.M. Asari--both supporters of the Mission--listened.

   Wintersburg land owners, such as the Cole family of Cole Ranch (vicinity of Huntington Beach's present-day Ocean View High School), worked with local Japanese on a lease or crop-rent basis, including C.M. Furuta and Henry Kiyomi Akiyama.  In fact, the Cole family became so fond of Akiyama that they offered him a home on their property and later partnered with Akiyama on his first goldfish ponds.  

   Unable to purchase property himself as an Issei, Akiyama later purchased property through his Nisei children and post WWII became one of the most successful business owners in Orange County (the Pacific Goldfish Farm).

Sei Fujii v. California

   The Alien Land Law of 1913 remained in place until the Supreme Court of California decided in 1952 that it violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.   The decision for Sei Fujii v. California found that prohibiting land and property ownership to non-white immigrants was unconstitutional. 

   On November 4, 1956, a repeal measure, listed as Proposition 13, was passed by California voters to officially repeal the Alien Land Law, 43 years after its enactment.

Academy Award® winner Chris Tashima is cast as Sei Fujii in the upcoming film, Lil Tokyo Reporter.  Fujii--the publisher of Kashu Mainichi (a Japanese American newspaper)--graduated from USC law school in 1911 but was not allowed to become an attorney because he was not a citizen. (Photo, Lil Tokyo Reporter)

   After his WWII incarceration in Department of Justice Detention Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sei Fujii purchased land in order to challenge the California Alien Land Law with his USC classmate J. Marion Wright.  Their story will be retold in the upcoming film, Lil Tokyo Reporter, set to debut in September 2012, http://ltreporter.com/blog/.  

UPDATE: The Orange County premier of Lil Tokyo Reporter is Nov. 17 - 18, benefiting Historic Wintersburg preservation. See http://historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-sei-fujii-legacy-little-tokyo-and.html

J. Marion Wright, circa 1913, "became the trusted advocate of the small but growing Japanese community. This young lawyer never let his friends and clients down." (DiscoverNikkei.com)

   Wintersburg Mission congregant Clarence Iwao Nishizu remembered  Sei Fujii in his 1982 oral history interview for the Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project.

   "I remember distinctly those days when the Issei were the discriminatory victims of the Alien Land Laws and Sei Fujii, Issei attorney and publisher...used to come to this school (the Anaheim Japanese School at La Palma and Citron Streets) to explain to our parents the latest findings of the court cases," recalled Nishizu.

   Nishizu told his interviewer, " it may be of interest to you to have me relate what Issei were like. They had guts, drive, and were willing to work to get ahead in the face of the discrimination of the Alien Land Law. They wanted to implant a foundation and steppingstone for the Nisei to follow..."

 The Sei Fujii property in Los Angeles. (Photo, National Park Service)

   The Supreme Court decision stated: "Congress, however, at least prior to 1924, saw fit to permit aliens who are ineligible for citizenship to enter and reside in the United States despite the fact that they could not become naturalized, and such aliens are entitled to the same protection as citizens from arbitrary discrimination..."

   "Although Japanese are not singled out by name for discriminatory treatment in the land law, the reference therein to federal standards for naturalization which exclude Japanese operates automatically to bring about that result,"  the Court concluded. "...The California Alien Land Law is obviously designed and administered as an instrument for effectuating racial discrimination, and the most searching examination discloses no circumstances justifying classification on that basis."

   "There is nothing to indicate that those alien residents who are racially ineligible for citizenship possess characteristics which are dangerous to the legitimate interests of the state, or that they, as a class, might use the land for purposes injurious to public morals, safety or welfare. Accordingly, we hold that the alien land law is invalid as in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment."

The American Dream - Historic Wintersburg's Furuta family home and barn. (Photo, September 2011)

*The Tsurumatsu Asari property, which was the site of Wintersburg's Asari and later Tashima Market, reportedly was located across Wintersburg (now Warner) Avenue from the Furutas east of the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks, in the general area of the Liberty Christian School.

A series on USC attorney J. Marion Wright, written by is daughter, Janice Marion Wright LaMoree, can be found at http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/authors/lamoree-janice/

Readers also may be interested in reading about the effects of the Alien Land Law on a Southern California Chinese family in the Jue Joe Clan blog, http://juejoeclan.blogspot.com/2010/08/details-jue-joe-and-alien-land-law.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.  

The Kannos: Orange County pioneers, Talbert, and the creation of Fountain Valley, California

LEFT: Superintendents Willis Warner (in car), C.M. Feather and William Hirstein, with Mayor A.A. Hall of Santa Ana and Mayor James Kanno of Fountain Valley at a Warner (former Wintersburg) Avenue bridge dedication in 1961.  Kanno and his family were congregants at the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church.  (Photo, Los Angeles Herald Examiner)

~Updated July 2017

     Among the congregants of national note of the Wintersburg Japanese Mission, is James Kanno, the first Nisei mayor in California and the first mayor of Fountain Valley (the former Talbert), California.*

   Maki Kanno, mother of James Kanno, was interviewed in 1983 for the Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project, jointly with the Japanese American Project of California State University - Fullerton (CSUF) Oral History Program.

Maki and Shuji Kanno

   Maki Kanno's family was from the village of Toyano, Japan, now part of present-day Fukushima.  Born in 1898, Maki Kanno's family was Samurai and her father was a large landholder, growing rice and silkworms.  As a young woman, Maki went to nursing school in Fukushima, then later studied midwifery in Tokyo.  During her time as a midwife, Maki helped deliver children of some of Japan's nobility. 

   Her future husband, Shuji Kanno, arrived in the United States in 1904.  When he returned to Japan in 1923 to get his wife, Maki, he was 34.  They had never met.

   Maki recalls Shuji had "came back to his village, Akaza (close to Toyano)...and it's a very small village, so everybody knew a man thirty-four years old, single, a man is here," laughed Maki, "and a twenty-five year old 'old maid' is in this village."

   Describing herself as a "liberated woman," Maki borrowed a wedding kimono for the Japanese country wedding ceremony, but skipped the traditional elaborate wig to simplify things.  Maki's new husband, Shuji, liked her style.

LEFT: A young Shuji Kanno, a charter member, elder and clerk of the Wintersburg Mission. (Photo, courtesy of Wintersburg Church) © All rights reserved.

   The Kannos made the two-week journey by sea on the Taiheiyo Maru.   Maki told her interviewer that her husband "was very sweet. Because she was afraid of being seasick, he chose a big ship and paid second-class fare for her."

   When she arrived in the United States, it was Easter, 1924.  Shuji was already Christian and upon their arrival in San Francisco, Maki was baptized.  Like many new Japanese wives, she arrived in a kimono and immediately went shopping for Western clothes.  She remembered the outfit during her interview almost sixty years later, "a blouse and a gathered light brown skirt."

  Maki was impressed with her new husband.  

   "A lot of the Japanese men told many lies in front of the brides-to-be, so they dreamed a big dream," she explained in her 1983 interview, "but when they arrived here, they found a tiny house awaiting them. Mr. Kanno, though, didn't tell her anything false."

   The Kannos traveled by train from San Francisco to Orange County, to Shuji's ranch in Greenville, now part of present-day Santa Ana.  Shuji Kanno leased acreage from German American Antone Borchard, and grew asparagus.  The Kannos lived on the Greenville ranch for fifteen years, and their sons, George (1924) and James (1925) were born there.

RIGHT: Reverend Junzo Nakamura and congregants of the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church near the manse / social hall, circa 1924. (Photo, courtesy of California State University - Fullerton, Center for Oral and Public History)
© All rights reserved.

Memories of Wintersburg Japanese Mission

   Maki Kanno remembered the Smeltzer Japanese Association in present-day Huntington Beach, but said she preferred her involvement with the Wintersburg Mission.  Traveling from his asparagus farm in Greenville (Santa Ana), Shuji attended night school at the Wintersburg Japanese Mission before getting married in order to learn English.  He eventually became an elder with the Mission, and taught in the Saturday Japanese Language School in Costa Mesa supported by the Mission. 

   Maki recalled Rev. Junzo Nakamura visiting "house after house...when Reverend Nakamura saw somebody working on their farm, he just walked over and talked with them. He didn't mind if his shoes became dirty." 

   "Mrs. Nakamura was a very, very nice person," said Maki, "She didn't have her own children, but she would baby-sit the other people's children. When there was a problem she was ready to help them. Both Reverend and Mrs. Nakamura were the center of the Japanese community. In that way, the church expanded."

   Maki explained the importance of the Wintersburg Japanese Mission to her family.  Shuji "was a Christian and he had a family, and he thought that to educate their sons in that Christian atmosphere was very important, so the Kanno boys were sent to the Sunday school classes at the church."  

   In addition to regular school during the week and Sunday at the Wintersburg Japanese Mission, the Kanno boys also attended the Saturday Japanese Language School where their father taught.  During her 1983 interview, Maki told the interviewer, laughing, that her sons "are still very nice boys."  By then, George was 59 and James, 58, had already served as mayor of Fountain Valley.

LEFT: Both George and James Kanno attended Santa Ana High School, while attending the Mission and Sunday school in Wintersburg Village. (Photo, Santa Ana Public Library)

Forced removal and confinement

   Both George and James Kanno were interviewed as part of the CSUF Oral History Program Japanese American Project.  They revealed in their interviews that it was probably their father's part time teaching work at the Japanese Language School that led to him being picked up as part of an early sweep of Japanese community leaders by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan.  

   Japanese Language School teachers, landowners, judo club owners and members of local Japanese associations were among the first taken by the FBI.  Among those picked up in Wintersburg Village were Gunjiro Tashima, owner of the Tashima market, and landowners Charles Furuta and Tsurumatsu "T.M." Asari, both crop and goldfish farmers on Wintersburg Avenue.  Both of whom had lived in the United States for close to 40 years.

   Shuji Kanno was first taken to the Orange County Jail, then to the U.S. Army's Lordsburg Alien Enemy Internment Center in New Mexico, while his family was taken to the Colorado River Relocation Center, Poston, Arizona.  By then, Shuji Kanno had been in the U.S. for 38 years.  In a Los Angeles Times interview in 1988, Shuji Kanno told reporter Santiago O'Donnell he was "plowing land on May 12, 1942, when FBI agents and sheriff's deputies pulled up in a car and made the arrests." James Kanno was 16 years old at the time.

RIGHT: There were two internment camps in New Mexico, Lordsburg and Santa Fe.  The 2002 plaque above at the former Santa Fe camp notes, "no person of Japanese ancestry in the U.S. was ever charged or convicted of espionage throughout the course of the war."  (New Mexico Office of the State Historian)

   While there is no mention of it in the Kanno oral history interviews, the conditions at and the management of the Lordsburg camp were troubling.  The New Mexico Office of the State Historian explains, ".... a protecting third power, in this case Spain, enforced the provisions (of the Geneva Convention at the camp). During their tenure at Lordsburg, Japanese prisoners appealed to Spain saying that they were being mistreated."  

   Escalating tensions led to a camp guard shooting two men in July, 1942, during the time when Shuji Kanno (as well as Charles Furuta and Gunjiro Tashima, both of Wintersburg Village) would have been at Lordsburg.

   When Maki, George and James Kanno departed Orange County for Poston, they were taken to Huntington Beach with other local Japanese Americans and then, by bus, to Poston, Camp I.  They leased their asparagus farm to a neighbor, who returned their farm when the Kannos came back to Orange County.

   Shuji Kanno was confined at Lordsburg for one year, before being transferred to join his family in Poston.   Maki told the oral history interviewer that she called upon her Samurai resolve to get through that period, telling herself "this is a war" and that "as long as both of them were healthy, they would just have to wait and see...she believed in the government of the United States; the government would not do anything bad to them." 

 George Kanno

   During World War II incarceration, seventeen-year-old George Kanno took a work furlough thinning sugar beets in Colorado.  During his oral history interview--conducted over 45 years ago in 1966 for the CSUF Japanese American Program--he describes the predominantly German farming community of Fort Morgan as welcoming the Japanese.

  

LEFT: John Fukushima and Masayaki Tashima, a Wintersburg Village resident on work furlough from Poston, thinning beets in Milliken, Colorado, circa November 1942.  (Photo, University of California - Berkeley, Bancroft Library)

   "...they understood our position because they were in Colorado during World War I, you see," explained George.  "The Germans were treated pretty rough during that war, and they were real understanding of our predicament, and we got along fine. They had four churches in Fort Morgan that conducted services in the German language.  They conducted services in German, and also in English for the younger generation who was raised there. (laughter) So in several respects, they were similar to the Japanese. Certain things fit, you see, so they were better able to understand our position." 

   George Kanno later enlisted in the U.S. Army, sustaining a gunshot wound in his leg while guarding a supply train in Europe.  When the Kannos sold their farm land, George became part owner of the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas and the Sierra Produce Company,  the largest produce supplier for hotels and casinos in Las Vegas.   

   "Remembering Dad: The Life of George Kanno," a 2010 memorial by his son, John, with early Orange County photographs, can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_0NMi31-64

RIGHT: James Kanno, first mayor of Fountain Valley (formerly Talbert) and first Nisei mayor in the mainland United States.

 James Kanno

   James Kanno was still in high school prior to World War II incarceration.  By then, the family was farming in Talbert (present day Fountain Valley).  Interviewed by the Huntington Beach Independent in 1999, he recalled "debating in his high school civics class that the Japanese evacuation would never take place because of America's democratic values."  Three months later, Kanno and his family left for incarceration at the Colorado River Relocation Center, Poston, Arizona.

   Kanno graduated from the high school in Poston--although hospitalized for a year with "valley fever"--and then was allowed to go to Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  When the family returned to Orange County, James attended Santa Ana College and then UCLA, while helping with the family's farm in Talbert.

LEFT: Teachers for the Poston Camp II High School 1942 - 1943, including Orange County teacher George Day Robertson (center front row in hat).  Robertson's book, based on her experience at Poston, was published when she was 100 years old. Read more about Robertson at http://www.historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/03/part-three-of-our-interview-series.html   (Photo, www.postonupdates.blogspot.com)

   
   Interviewed in 1971 for the CSUF Oral History Program Japanese American Project, James Kanno described his reaction when asked about the family's incarceration.

   "...my idea was that there were many people on the outside that realized that the evacuation was wrong, and because of the war and hysteria, through economic pressures and some other things, this evacuation came about," commented Kanno.  "But a good example was The (Orange County) Register, the newspaper in Santa Ana. Editorially the owner, Mr. R. C. Hoiles, indicated that this evacuation was wrong."**

RIGHT: Painting of R.C. Hoiles, owner of the Santa Ana Register, now Orange County Register.  (Image, Orange County Register)

   James continued, "for a person right in the middle of the war to come out with this type of editorial was quite admirable. I probably wouldn't have had the nerve or the guts to do what he did. So when you see somebody like this on the outside, you realize that the good people, or the thinking people, those that are sophisticated, who thought about it, would realize that this was wrong. So I felt that this was a mistake. Like anybody, the country made a mistake."

LEFT: Shuji Kanno, home again in Orange County after returning from internment at the Lordsburg Alien Enemy Internment Center and Poston Arizona Relocation Center, Sept. 12, 1945. (Photo, University of California - Berkeley, Bancroft Library)

   

Creating a city

   In 1956---after receiving an engineering degree from UCLA while continuing to help the family's growing farm holdings---James was asked to serve on the committee to incorporate the Talbert area farmland into a new city.

   He recalls, "people were starting to come into that area, and trying to develop it: buying up some of the property and putting it into housing, commercial and industrial uses. Several of the farmers got together and decided that for our own protection it might be a good idea to incorporate that area and form a city."

   James Kanno was urged on by his wife, Fran, "I attended several of their meetings, prompted by my wife, who kept insisting, 'Gee, we've got property here, so you better attend those meetings.'

   The incorporation of Fountain Valley became a reality in 1957.  James explained during his oral history interview, "the two questions that were asked on the ballot: 1. Do you want to form a city, yes or no? 2. If so, who would you want as councilmen for the city? There were nine people running for the five council positions. I don't know what happened, but I ended up with the most votes." 

   With that vote, James Kanno became the first Nisei mayor in the mainland United States and the first mayor of the newly incorporated Fountain Valley.

RIGHT: Dedication of Fountain Valley's first supermarket, Alpha Beta, at Magnolia Street and Warner (former Wintersburg) Avenue, May 18, 1964.  James Kanno is in the front row, third from the left. (Photo, Orange County Register)

   Jim Kanno's election and subsequent appointment as mayor made news around the world.  Voice of America, U.S. News and World Report, and Japanese media were among the news outlets that descended on the once quiet farming community.

   "...the 'Voice of America' radio show heard about this and they came over to see me," recalled James.  "In fact, they asked me to cut a tape interview with them, and I said, 'Well, gee, this is just a small farming community, and it's really nothing.' But they said, 'We're not asking you whether you will or not; we're more or less telling you to do so.' I said, "Well, gee, how come?" 

   The 1995 Orange County Almanac noted that "one Tokyo magazine pointed out that Kanno was elected despite the city's modest Japanese American population.  The magazine said Kanno's election 'proves that there is still room for success in America.' "

 

   With Kanno's assistance, the young community of Fountain Valley developed zoning standards and built the infrastructure that made farming land more valuable for investors.  Having increased the family's land holdings, the Kannos--like many of Orange County's farm families--eventually sold or traded land for other investments.  

LEFT: Buffums Department Store at the Westminster Mall, circa 1975. The large goldfish farm of Wintersburg's Akiyama family was originally at the mall site. The Akiyamas traded the property for land and a retail center in Vista. (Photo, www.departmentstoremuseum.blogspot.com)

   The Los Angeles Times reported in 1987 that James Kanno had acquired the Buffum's Department Store in the Westminster Mall, a Ferrell's Jr. ice cream parlor, a Bank of America branch building and a Carl's Jr. restaurant.  James Kanno continued to manage his real estate investments, a result of his family's farming efforts, through retirement. 

Looking back

   James Kanno was philosophical about the experience of California's Japanese Americans during his oral history interview in 1971, understanding the position taken by his father and other Issei.  

   Shuji Kanno had advised others incarcerated at Lordsburg who were preparing for their interrogations, "...no matter what happens, America is where we came to and this is where we want to raise our children. So in spite of what happened, I feel that during this interview you better not say anything damaging, because we cast our lot. We came to America; this is where we want to raise our family; this is where we want to stay."

ABOVE: James Kanno was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times in 1984 and earlier by California State University Fullerton for the Japanese American oral history program. (Image: Los Angeles Times, September 2, 1984)

Looking forward

  James Kanno also relayed during his 1971 interview, a moment when his young son showed him the difference a generation makes.  His son, David, planned to run for student body president at his high school.

   "Why are you going to run for president instead of athletic commissioner or something like that?" James asked him.  "He said, 'Well, there are only three running for student body president, and the odds are better.' So then I proceeded to tell him, 'Well, David, we just moved into this area, and people really don't know you. Some of the kids went all through grammar school together, so they're well known."

   "Besides, you have to remember, you're Japanese American and it might be a little tough to get in.' Of course, I was the overly concerned parent; I was sort of preparing him for the defeat," explained James, "But he said, 'Well, Dad, you know because I am Japanese American, it's helpful.' I said, 'How's that?' And he said, 'Because everybody notices me. I stick out. So that's how come I'm going to get elected and become president.' So I said, 'Okay.' "

   "Well, to make a long story short, he was elected student body president and was well accepted. So I guess sometimes we worry too much about the racial issue." 

   UPDATE JULY 18, 2017:  James Kanno--instrumental in the creation of present-day Orange County--passed on July 15, 2017.  

Read the Orange County Register obituary at http://www.ocregister.com/2017/07/17/james-kanno-first-mayor-of-fountain-valley-dies-at-91/

Read the Los Angeles Times obiturary at http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-james-kanno-20170718-story.html

 _____________________

*The first reported Japanese American mayor in the United States is thought to be Kinjiro Matsudaira in Edmonston, Maryland, in 1927. 

**Excerpt from Opinion written by R.C. Hoiles, then owner of the Santa Ana Register, October 14, 1942:
  

   "The question we should consider is whether or not this evacuation will in the long run really help us win the war. If it will not, we should make every effort possible to correct the error as rapidly as possible. It would seem that convicting people of disloyalty to our country without having specific evidence against them is too foreign to our way of life and too close akin to the kind of government we are fighting. We need all the manpower we can obtain. To remove the Japanese from the place where they could serve our country by helping us furnish food and doing useful services weakens us in our defense by that amount. We must realize, as Henry Emerson Fosdick so wisely said, 'Liberty is always dangerous but it is the safest thing we have.' That, also, in reality, means that true democracy is always dangerous but it is the safest thing we have. If we are not willing to run any risks and cannot have faith in humanity and regard people innocent until they are proved guilty, we are on the road to losing our democracy."

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.  

Voices from the past: Part Four The Wintersburg Interviews

ABOVE: Yukiko Furuta inside her home at Wintersburg (Warner) Avenue, circa 1912.  (Photo courtesy of Center for Oral and Public History, California State University Fullerton, PJA 313) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   Historic Wintersburg continues with Part 4 of 4 of the interview with Arthur A. Hansen.  Hansen is Emeritus Professor of History and Asian American Studies at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), immediate past director of the CSUF Center for Oral and Public History (COPH), founding director of COPH’s Japanese American Oral History Project, and currently serves as a historical consultant at the Japanese American National Museum.

----------------------------

   The interviews with Henry Kiyomi Akiyama, Yukiko Furuta, and Reverend Kenji Kikuchi yielded a wealth of information about the Wintersburg area and, most particularly, the historic structures associated with the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church and the Furuta family.  Hansen provides their narratives below.

Henry Kiyomi Akiyama - From Nagano, Japan to the Wintersburg celery fields

   
   The first of this trio of pioneering Orange County Issei to come to Orange County was Henry Kiyomi Akiyama, who arrived in 1907.  Born in 1888 in a village within Nagano Prefecture (the "Japanese Alps" or "snow country" region of Japan), Akiyama emigrated from Japan at age twenty on a student visa.  

   Part of his motivation for leaving Japan and migrating to the United States was to avoid conscription into the Japanese army.  Also, his family did not have much money and he had only an eighth-grade education; he did not foresee a promising future in Japan.

   After landing by boat in Vancouver, Canada, Akiyama took a train to Seattle, Washington.  There he remained working at a sawmill for six months, following which he moved again to San Francisco, California.  The situation was not good in that city, however, since he had arrived there only one year after its devastation by the legendary 1906 earthquake and fire.

LEFT: Matsumoto Castle in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, remains one of the oldest intact castles of the Samurai.  The rule of the Samurai came to an end in the Meiji era (circa 1868-1912), which prompted some to leave for America.  (Photo, Wikimedia Commons, circa 1904)

   When he left Japan, Akiyama intended to go to California.  This was because one of his Nagano village relatives, Tsuneji Chino, had gone there two years earlier and settled in the unincorporated southern California agricultural community of Wintersburg (founded circa 1890 by and named after Ohio-born Henry Winters).  

   Chino, a well-educated graduate from a teachers' college in Japan, was running a labor camp for Issei working in the lucrative Orange County celery fields.  (At the height of production, in the first decade of the twentieth century, nearly 6,000 acres in the County were devoted to celery.)  

   Mindful that this camp--together with three others in Wintersburg--hired hundreds of Issei workers at harvest time, Akiyama booked train passage from San Francisco to Orange County (a twenty-one hour journey).

   In the camp run by Chino, Akiyama labored alongside a work gang ranging between thirty and fifty Issei, most originating from the Japanese prefectures of Hiroshima, Fukuoka, and Wakayama.  The Chino-led camp in Wintersburg (vicinity of present-day Springdale Street) was located on agricultural land owned by Ray Moore.  

ABOVE: Smeltzer celery train accident, circa 1901, in the area of present-day Edinger Avenue and Gothard Avenue.  The soft peat soils were perfect for celery, but not so perfect for trains.  (Photo, First American Title)

   There was a County celery association organized as early as 1902 by Caucasian celery farmers, like Moore, located in nearby Smeltzer: the Smeltzer Celery Association.  The Association--which handled celery shipping for Smeltzer, Wintersburg, and the adjacent community of Talbert--required labor camp bosses to round up the needed agricultural workers.

   Each landlord provided his laborers with housing, which was woefully substandard.  Because no beds were supplied, the workers spread straw on the dirt floor and slept upon blankets.  Once the harvest ended, each laborer rolled up his blanket and carried it away to a boarding house in Los Angeles' "Little Tokyo" district, until receiving a new work assignment.  

   These workers called themselves buranke-katsugi or "blanket carriers."  They worked ten hours daily, Monday through Saturday, and their typical compensation was fifteen cents an hour.

RIGHT: Workers in the Smeltzer celery fields, now present-day Huntington Beach, earned fifteen cents an hour.

   Akiyama, though, did not travel back and forth between Wintersburg and Little Tokyo.  With completion of celery harvesting--October to February--he remained in his Wintersburg labor camp for the rest of the year to make celery plant beds, grow potatoes and onions, and do a variety of other landlord-assigned jobs.

   According to Akiyama, some of the Issei celery workers in the labor camps spent their Sundays attending church.  This was possible because in 1904, Reverend Hisakichi Terasawa--a fluent, English-speaking Episcopalian minister and graduate of Cambridge University, England--started missionary work among the County's Japanese immigrants.  At first, Reverend Terasawa (whose wife temporarily lived apart from him in San Francisco while working as an immigration office interpreter) organized church services in a barn on the same Wintersburg property he was renting.  

   Terasawa cleaned out the barn and borrowed chairs from the Veterans' Social Home, a Caucasian institution, for his Issei parishioners.  He made the barn into a weekend gathering place for the mostly bachelor men, since they had nowhere else to socialize.

ABOVE: The Reverend and Mrs. Terasawa and family.  A graduate of Cambridge University, Terasawa was instrumental in the founding of the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission effort in 1904. (Photo, courtesy of Wintersburg Church) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   At the time, Japanese aliens could buy land.  Reverend Terasawa helped buy five acres in Wintersburg, of which half an acre was set aside for the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission.  Charles Mitsuji "C.M." Furuta--a prominent Issei supporter of the church project from its inception--owned the remaining four and one-half acres.  The Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission was dedicated in December, 1910.  Within two years, it was joined by the manse, or parson's house (circa 1911) and in 1912, a cottage owned by Furuta and his Issei wife, Yukiko Yajima Furuta.

   Next to the church in Wintersburg was a store owned by another Issei, Tsurumatsu "T.M." Asari, originally from the Wakayama Prefecture.  Akiyama relays in his oral history that Asari came to Orange County in 1903 and was probably the first person of Japanese ancestry to make the County his home.  

   It was in large part because of the Asari market that Wintersburg became the center of the County's Japanese community, which by 1910 consisted of a year-round community of approximately 20 Issei.  At harvest time, many more Japanese came to Wintersburg to work as seasonal laborers.  Many of these young Issei had knowledge of Christianity in Japan, accounting in part for their attendance at the Wintersburg Mission.  In the case of Akiyama, he converted to Christianity at the Wintersburg Mission in 1913, though he had been associated in Japan with a Christian group centered in Tokyo called Rikkokai.

RIGHT:  A gathering in Wintersburg, circa 1910-1915. (Photo, courtesy of Wintersburg Church) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   About 1910, Tsuneji Chino (Springdale labor camp) and Shujiro Ohta organized a branch of the San Francisco-based, national Japanese Association.  Because of the existence of the celery association in Smeltzer, the local branch was called the Smeltzer Japanese Association, although it met in Wintersburg.  Asari told the Association he would build a second floor onto his market--which included a barber shop and pool hall--if they agreed to rent it for their meetings, which they promptly did.

 

  This development enhanced Wintersburg's status as the center of the Japanese community in Orange County.  As for Akiyama, he worked for several years at the Asari market and also served as one of the treasurers for the Smeltzer Japanese Association.

   In Akiyama's recollection, most of the Japanese living in the Wintersburg-Smeltzer-Talbert area belonged to the local branch of the Association.  He recalled the Association functioned like an arm of the Japanese Consulate for the immigrant community, issuing birth certificates, attending to matters relating to the draft status of overseas Japanese residents, mediating between the Japanese and Caucasian community during times of trouble, and coordinating social events, such as picnics and athletic competitions.

ABOVE: Japanese agricultural workers in Huntington Beach celery fields, circa 1920.   (Photo courtesy of Center for Oral and Public History, California State University Fullerton, CD1002) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   The Association's president was Akiyama's Nagano relative, Chino, who also served in the same capacity for the Central Japanese Association of Southern California for branches in Los Angeles, San Pedro, Garden Grove and Orange.  M. Matsushima--who came from the same Nagano village as Akiyama and Chino--served as secretary for the Smeltzer Japanese Association.

   After working in Chino's labor camp for two years (1908-1909), Akiyama joined C.M. Furuta and Chino in farming on a crop rent basis on land near the Wintersburg Mission owned by M.C. Cole.  Together, the three Issei worked sixty acres on Cole's land for which they received a specified part of the crop as their share.  Mainly, they cultivated celery, sugar beets and beans.

   Because of Chino's time-consuming Japanese Association responsibilities, most of the actual labor was done by Akiyama and Furuta.  By 1912, Chino moved to Talbert and started cultivating sugar beets.  Cole--feeling himself too old to farm any longer--persuaded Akiyama and Furuta to take over his farm.  In that same year, Furuta sailed to Japan to marry Yukiko Furuta (née Yajima) of Hiroshima.

Yukiko Furuta: A bride at seventeen and a new life in Wintersburg

   The interview with Yukiko Yajima Furuta nicely picks up the thread of Akiyama's interview narrative.

ABOVE:  Yukiko and C.M. Furuta at their new home on Wintersburg (Warner) Avenue, circa 1912.  (Photo courtesy of Center for Oral and Public History, California State University Fullerton, PJA 311) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   Born in 1895 as the oldest daughter in a family of five children, her family before her birth was a good Samurai family.  However, because her father had spent all the family's money, the Yajima family was not wealthy during her childhood.  In that interval--when the population of Hiroshima (on the Ohta River) was 130,000--her father was in the business of selling safes.

   Yukiko had completed the compulsory eight grades of public school and was living at home when a neighbor lady encouraged her to think about going to the United States, as a nice country where she could have a good life.  Yukiko began to seriously consider moving someday to America.

   The neighbor knew C.M. Furuta very well.  He was born in 1882 in a rural area of the Hiroshima Prefecture, about 40 kilometers from the city, where his land-poor family farmed.  After his father died when Furuta was five years old, his older brother decided to immigrate to Hawaii.  His persistent suggestions led Furuta to leave for America.

RIGHT: Japanese agricultural workers in  Hawaii, circa 1900.

   In 1900, Furuta set sail for Hawaii.  But when the boat arrived, passengers were informed that because a contagion was spreading throughout the islands, they would not be allowed to disembark in Hawaii.  Instead of Hawaii, Furuta came to the United States mainland, disembarking in Tacoma, Washington.  He secured employment at a sawmill at first.  

   Following some railroad work in the Tacoma area, Furuta--who had heard about Orange County good weather and job prospects in the celery fields of Wintersburg and Smeltzer--decided to move there (circa 1904).

   Yukiko, though, had never met or even heard about Furuta until one day in 1912.  The neighbor woman who had championed America invited her to a public bath house.  There she told Yukiko, "Go home before me and if some guests come to your house, please serve them an ashtray and cigarette set."  Without suspecting anything, Yukiko duly followed her neighbor's directive.  Soon after her arrival, two male guests--C.M. Furuta and a baishakunin (go between)--appeared.

   Clearly, this was a prelude to an arranged marriage, which occurred on October 15, 1912, in a civil ceremony at the baishakunin's home.  The Yajimas obviously knew about and approved of the fact that Furuta, then in his twelfth year in the United States, had saved enough money to buy his Wintersburg acreage and was planning to build a house on it for his new bride.

ABOVE: The congregation of the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission in front of the Mission building circa 1911, just prior to the Furuta's marriage.  (Photo courtesy of Wintersburg Presbyterian Church) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   While living with the Yajima family for two months after the wedding, Furuta shared with his wife some information about his experience in the U.S.  He told her that he and four other men had started their own celery farm on leased land located on what is now Goldenwest Street.  The farm failed, probably because the partners did not know how to manage it.  They did succeed, however, in running up a large debt.  Because Furuta's partners had run away to escape repaying the debt, he was left with the responsibility.

   Yukiko found out how Furuta ultimately discharged the debt.  Reverend Terasawa had baptized Furuta a Christian--the first person of Japanese ancestry to be baptized in Orange County.  Terasawa took care of Furuta, treating him like his son.  Furuta regarded Terasawa as his father and learned English from him.  In the evenings, Furuta would commute to the Wintersburg Mission by bicycle, and was a sincere Christan, and an honest, hard-working man who did not drink or smoke.

   Furuta developed a very good reputation from the hakujin (Caucasian) farm owner from whom he and his partners had rented the land.  The owner so trusted Furuta, he loaned him money.  Furuta worked hard to not only repay his debt to the owner, but also raise sufficient money to purchase land in Wintersburg along with Reverend Terasawa.

LEFT: The opening of the San Francisco municipal railway in December 1912, at the time of Yukiko Furuta's arrival in America.

   On Dec. 6, 1912, the Furutas sailed from Yokohama, Japan to the U.S.  After about fifteen days at sea, they arrived in San Francisco.  There they spent a week--including New Year's--as house guests of the Terasawas.  Mrs. Terasawa took the kimono-clad Yukiko shopping at Market Street to buy her first Western dress for her life in America.

   The Furutas then traveled from San Francisco to Los Angeles, staying at a hotel in Little Tokyo.  While Yukiko remained at the hotel, C.M. Furuta commuted by streetcar to Orange County, disembarking at the Huntington Beach station and using a bicycle or buggy to get to Wintersburg.  There he made preparations for the construction of their home.  First, he had to borrow money from a Huntington Beach bank, which extended him a loan because he had land as equity.  He then arranged for a Caucasian carpenter to build the house.

RIGHT: The Pacific Electric Railway ("red car") in Little Tokyo, circa 1918, which connected to a station in Huntington Beach.  After moving to Wintersburg, Yukiko Furuta took the red car to Little Tokyo now and then for shopping.

    
   Although the house was small--a living room, kitchen and two bedrooms--it was considered very nice for a Nihonjin (Japanese) in the Wintersburg area.  There was no electricity or gas, the bathroom was an outhouse, while the front of the house was so muddy when it rained it made walking nearly impossible.  Still, "at the time," recalled Yukiko in her interview, their house "was very remarkable and everyone else admired it very much, because other Japanese who owned houses bought old houses."  

   In Wintersburg, only two other Nikkei families besides the Furutas then owned houses: the Asaris and the Terehatas.  The Terehata house was on part of the Furuta property and was an old house relocated from another site to Wintersburg.  The Asari house was near the Asari store, on the north side of present day Warner Avenue and east of the railroad tracks (close to what is now Lyndon Street).

   Yukiko stayed in Los Angeles until the home was nearly completed.   By the time Yukiko came to live in Wintersburg, the nearby market had been sold by T. M. Asari to one of his former delivery boys, Gunjiro Tajima.  Like the Furutas, Tajima immigrated to the U.S. from Hiroshima.  

   The Tajima market in Wintersburg was divided by a wall, with half of it a barbershop run by an Issei man.  There also was a pool hall, which Yukiko remembered being frequented by Wintersburg's Mexican Americans who lived east of the railroad tracks on the north side of Wintersburg (Warner) Avenue across from the Furuta's property.

LEFT: A circa 1960s topographic map shows the location of the Southern Pacific Railroad line through Wintersburg, the former Cole ranch on the southwest corner of Wintersburg (Warner) and Gothard, and the Warner Avenue Drive-In in the location of the former armory where Wintersburg residents met in 1904 to discuss building churches.  The Furuta property is at the southeast corner of Wintersburg Avenue and Nichols Lane.

   Tajima's market was fairly big and carried groceries and clothing.  All of the Japanese people living in the rural Wintersburg-Smeltzer-Talbert area shopped there.  While the Furutas lived close, this was not the case for many of the other Issei shoppers.  The market employed delivery boys to reach customers throughout the surrounding countryside.

   The Furutas only neighbor was the Nichols family (editor's note: in the vicinity of present-day Nichols Lane).  Otherwise, the Furutas lived in near isolation.  This was especially true for Yukiko, since she stayed in her home almost all the time while her husband left daily for work.  Because of the anti-Japanese feeling pervasive in Orange County at that time--coupled with Yukiko's lack of English--C.M. Furuta cautioned her to be sure to keep the door of the house locked.

   C.M. Furuta's daily work was cultivating celery, sugar beets, and beans on land he leased from M.C. Cole in partnership with Henry Akiyama.  After living in their bungalow, the Furutas in 1913 rented it to a Mexican American family and moved to a large two-story home on the Cole ranch.  Since the house was so big, the Furutas made their home on the bottom floor and invited Akiyama to live on the top floor.  Akiyama was still single then, and Yukiko agreed to cook all of his meals as well as those for her husband and herself.  Unfortunately, their joint farming venture did not prosper and within a year they incurred a staggering $10,000 debt.

ABOVE: Yukiko Furuta with her son, Raymond, feeding chickens at the Cole ranch, circa 1915.  The Cole ranch was located on the site of present-day Ocean View High School off Gothard Avenue.  (Photo courtesy of Center for Oral and Public History, California State University Fullerton, PJA 310) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   

   Akiyama happened to see a photograph of Yukiko's younger sister, Masuko Yajima, and intimated he might want to marry her.  Knowing her family in Japan was not doing well economically and feeling that it would be nice to be joined by her sister, Yukiko encouraged the marriage.  She wrote to her father, who responded that Yukiko must be lonely in Orange County and that it would be a good idea for Masuko to join her by marrying Akiyama.  In the fall of 1915, Masuko sailed to San Francisco to meet Akiyama.  On Nov. 11, 1915, after being married by Reverend Teresawa, they went by train to Orange County, making their home at the Cole ranch with the Furutas.

   C.M. Furuta's and Henry Akiyama's partnership lasted until 1915.  With some timely advise from H. Larta--who farmed the land adjacent to theirs and was a member of the mother Presbyterian church for the Wintersburg Mission--they began to grow potatoes and corn, instead of celery and sugar beets, alongside their bean crop.  By the time World War I broke out in 1914, the cost of food rose steeply and the prices for agricultural products rose.  Furuta and Akiyama had a bumper harvest that year and the next.  They netted enough profit to extinguish their total debt.

RIGHT: Sugar beet fields in Huntington Beach from an early postcard, circa 1915.

   Yukiko recalled M.C. Cole's son, a carpenter, may have become jealous of the large profit being made farming his family's land.  With their lease coming to an end in 1915, the son--noting that Furuta had built a house on his own land--said, "Why don't you go to your own house and live there?"  Akiyama stayed on at the Cole ranch, while the Furutas moved back to their property, along with their son, Raymond, born in 1914.  They expanded their house with an indoor bathroom and additional rooms to accommodate the arrival of more children.

  Perhaps three or four years after the Furutas moved back to their home, Akiyama grew tired of farming.  C.M. Furuta invited him to live in the home previously occupied by the Terehatas.  Akiyama then leased land from T.M. Asari to farm and worked part time at a nearby hakujin-owned nursery, while growing goldfish in a small pond.

   Whereas Akiyama's farming was unsuccessful, his goldfish venture turned out well.  He built a bigger pond and launched his goldfish business, which in time would make him one of the wealthiest Japanese Americans in pre-WWII Orange County.  

   Meanwhile, Furuta cobbled together an income from growing strawberries on his own land, helping Issei Kyutaro Ishii--a Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission congregant and father of Charles Ishii--farm asparagus, as well as working horses for other Wintersburg farmers.  In 1927, when Akiyama bought forty acres for a new goldfish business in Westminster, Furuta took over his goldfish pond on the Furuta property.

Reverend Kenji Kikuchi: The Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission and Church

   The interview with Reverend Kenji Kikuchi extends the Wintersburg story from the Issei generation to the Nisei generation.  By the time of his arrival in 1926, there were about fifty Issei farmers in the area.  Most of them--like Furuta and Akiyama--had gotten married, either through an arranged marriage or the "picture bride" system, had started families, and developed family farms.

   Before immigrating to America in 1924 from the village of Watari in the Miyagi Prefecture, Kikuchi had been raised in a farm family as a practicing Shintoist and Buddhist.  In Watari, he was influenced by his future father-in-law, Mr. Iwama, a devoted Christian.  He not only sent his daughters (including Rev. Kikuchi's future wife, Yukiko Iwama) to a Christian school, but also opened his house for Christian meetings.  He invited missionaries to come speak at his own expense.  

   Rev. Kikuchi attended both a Christian college and seminary in Japan, and then determined to leave for America to further his education at Princeton University in New Jersey.

LEFT: Reverend Kenji Kikuchi and his wife, Yukiko, spent ten years with the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission.  He helped with the building of the 1934 church building during the Great Depression.  (Photo courtesy of Wintersburg Church) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   After landing in San Francisco, Kikuchi spent a summer picking strawberries in California's Imperial Valley.  He became acquainted with both Issei "blanket carriers" as well as students, like himself, earning money to finance their college education.  While in the Imperial Valley, Rev. Kikuchi attended services at the Methodist Church in Brawley.  There, he was impressed by the pioneer minister from Japan.  

   Following this experience, Kikuchi attended the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, a Presbyterian-run insitution.  At seminary, Kikuchi prepared for American life while sharpening his English skills. 

   Next, Kikuchi spent a year at Princeton, where he and two other seminarians were the first Japanese students at the Princeton seminary.  They boarded together in the same student club where they also took their meals.  Because they longed for Asian cuisine--particularly the taste of soy sauce--they would periodically travel by streetcar to a Chinatown in Trenton, or by train to Philadelphia or New York for Chinese food.

   After Princeton, Kikuchi returned by train to California as a summertime student pastor for a small Japanese church in Sacramento, living in the parsonage.  In addition to becoming familiar with the Japanese settlement in Sacramento, Kikuchi traveled to the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys viewing different types of Japanese communities and churches.

   A minister friend in Long Beach wrote to Kikuchi that the church in Wintersburg, though quite small, had an opening for a pastor.  In Orange County, he was told, most of the Issei were vegetable farmers and many of them raised chili peppers.  Without even visiting Orange County, recalled Kikuchi in his interview, "I just followed my intuition that this was the place God gave me to work at." 

ABOVE: Sunday school at the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission, circa 1924, prior to Reverend Kikuchi's arrival in Wintersburg.  (Photo courtesy of Wintersburg Church) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   What he first noticed about the Wintersburg Mission was that the corner lot was overgrown with dry weeds.  This neglect had occurred because his pedecessor, Reverend Junzo Nakamura, had left Orange County some months previously for a San Diego Japanese church whose congregation included a large number of former Smeltzer farmers.

    Kikuchi focused his attention on his congregation, "then about a hundred Japanese people, Issei and Nisei, came to the area, so I was deeply determined to take care of them.  It was a strong impression I received.  So for ten years, I never got tired, never became disappointed, and thoroughly enjoyed myself; (and I believe) most of the people enjoyed our lives with us like we were a family."

   During his decade of service to the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church, Kikuchi pursued a "practical mission."  In his sermons delivered in Japanese (Sunday school classes for the Nisei were conducted in English),  he talked about practical application of Christian principles to the daily lives of farmers and their families.  

   A typical sermon, Kikuchi explained in his interview, "might be about father-son relations or neighbor relations, something like that.  And it was also about how to act when you met some difficulty in life such as sickness."

ABOVE: The Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission and manse off Wintersburg (Warner) Avenue, circa 1912 - 1915.  Note the stand of gum trees in the background which were used for firewood.  (Photo courtesy of Wintersburg Church) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   When asked if he provided the church members with legal advice, Kikuchi responded: "Just everyday living advice.  The people came to see the minister in case of sickness, some school matter, or family matters.  How to help them was the meaning of the Church's existence as well as the minister's.  I felt that I had to help the people even when I was busy.  To serve them and help them socially was the minister's mission in church work."

   As to whether his parishioners were moved by religious or social considerations, Kikuchi was of the opinion that at first it was social, but eventually it was Christian teaching, doctrines, and faith.  "Some people understood the Christian way quickly and some stuck to the old Japanese tradition."  He felt that especially the young people, the Nisei mostly from Buddhist families, reacted favorably to Christianity and proved very cooperative as community and church members.

   Kikuchi was paid $70 per month, which included his housing in the adjacent manse off Wintersburg Avenue.  The Presbyterian Conference of Los Angeles provided $25, the mother church paid $17, and the rest of his salary came through offerings from the local Japanese community.  In addition, many Issei farmers donated crates of vegetables to the Kikuchi family, which grew to include five children.  

   Also, parishioners would volunteer their labor to make repairs on the Church and manse.  Often, the person doing the repairs was neighbor C.M. Furuta.

RIGHT: Huntington Beach's present-day Pacific Coast Highway at Main Street and the Pier, circa 1930s.  (Photo courtesy of Orange County Archives)

   By 1930, the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church congregation had grown to the point where a new building was needed.  Raising money for the new church building was especially daunting due to the Great Depression.  There was a designated church committee assigned the responsibility of raising funds, but practically everyone in the congregation worked as fundraisers.  Little by little, donations accumulated.

   "First," recalled Kikuchi, "we deposited money in the Huntington Beach Bank, a state bank.  But in the prime of the Depression, the deposits were frozen.  Charlie Ishii's father and I ran to (the bank) but the bank was closed.  We almost felt like crying.  But, later, when we fixed pews in the church, we could draw our deposit from the bank after the arrangement by the government."

   Finally in 1934, a new church building (adjacent to the original Mission and manse) was dedicated as the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church.  Whereas the Mission, erected by 1910, measured approximately 50 feet north-south by 20 feet east-west, the 1934 Church building measured 30 feet north-south by 82 feet east-west.  

   As its first minister, Kikuchi served  Wintersburg parishioners until 1936.  Thirty years later, the congregation moved in 1966 to its new church building in Garden Grove (now part of Santa Ana), where it remains today.

ABOVE: A postcard image of the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church, circa 1934, commemorating the new chapel and the mission founding in 1904.  (Photo courtesy of Wintersburg Church) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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