Giving Thanks: Opening doors during hard times

 

ABOVE: The Wintersburg Japanese Church building is the third of the Wintersburg Japanese Mission buildings, following construction of the 1910 Mission building and 1910 manse (parsonage). It was constructed during the Great Depression, funded by small donations from around Orange County. This photograph was taken for the official dedication in December 1934. At this time, the mission effort had been official recognized as a church by the Presbyterian USA. (Photo: Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church, December 10, 1934. Courtesy Wintersburg Church.)

   Thirty years after the founding of the Wintersburg Mission in 1904, the third of the Mission buildings was planned for completion by Thanksgiving 1934. It had not been easy. Fundraising for the new mission building had begun before "Black Friday" shocked the nation in October 1930, shutting down banks and freezing funds. The Church fund lost over $500, its initial seed money for the project.

   "We collected donations little by little. First, we deposited the money in the Huntington Beach Bank, a state bank. But in the prime of the Depression, the deposits were frozen," remembers Rev. Kikuchi.  "Charlie's (Ishii) father and I ran to the Huntington Beach 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. In this way, we collected small amounts of money little by little."

RIGHT: The Huntington Beach Bank at Main and Walnut streets in Huntington Beach, circa 1910. The bank was established in 1904, the same year the Wintersburg Mission effort was founded. It eventually became the First National Bank of Huntington Beach and the Savings Bank of Huntington Beach. (Photo courtesy of City of Huntington Beach archives)

   As construction neared completion in 1934, the Santa Ana Register noted, "the building plans of the congregation were set back several years ago when the closing of a bank wiped out more than $500. Through contributions from Japanese of Orange county and members of other county Presbyterian churches, the fund has been replenished". The Santa Ana Register also noted the building would open on the 30th anniversary of "one of the oldest Japanese missions in California".

   The cost of the 1934 Church building was $5,500. The main sanctuary space was set to seat 300 people, initially divided by a folding partition to provide quarters for the Christian Endeavor and Sunday school groups. The Santa Ana Register reported the Church also was "fitted up" with a kitchen, a pastor's study, restrooms and a cloak room, and would be finished with a white stucco exterior. 

RIGHT: A sugar beet wagon races down an unpaved and dusty Wintersburg Road in front of the Furuta farm, circa 1914. The road was still unpaved when the Church building opened in 1934 and wooden planks were placed on the ground as walkways. (Photograph courtesy of the Furuta family)

   In order to construct the 1934 Church building in a prominent location in Wintersburg Village fronting Wintersburg Road (Warner Avenue) and Southern Street (Nichols Lane), the 1910 wooden Mission building was moved back from the main road. The three mission buildings were constructed on a parcel of land donated to the mission by Charles Mitsuji Furuta, who owned the entire five-acre goldfish farm now known as Historic Wintersburg. The 1910 Mission building would be used as a social hall, for Sunday school, and as a boys club, once the new, larger Church building opened.

   Orange County architect Everett E. Parks designed the 1934 Wintersburg Japanese Church. Parks architecture office was in Santa Ana, which he shared with his partner, Irene McFaul, one of the few women licensed to practice architecture in the state of California at the time. 

LEFT: An advertisement placed by architect Everett E. Parks is on the upper right of a full-page feature with congratulatory messages in the Santa Ana Register for the opening of a new, larger venue for Tony's Cafe in Santa Ana. Parks designed the new cafe in the Spanish Revival style popular during the 1930s in southern California. (Santa Ana Register, August 6, 1937)

   Parks is noted as the architect for the Automobile Club of Southern California office in Anaheim and the second building for the First Baptist Church of Santa Ana in 1953.  He also designed Tony's Cafe on Bush Street in Santa Ana for longtime, popular Orange County restaurateur Tony Barrio in 1937. Parks was president of the American Institute of Architects Orange County chapter in 1952, bringing national affiliation for the former Orange County Architects organization. 

   Designed in the Spanish Revival style, the Wintersburg Japanese Church kept with a simple aesthetic. The interior structure is comprised of old growth redwood, which has retained an almost new appearance today when viewed through the open ceiling. Additional investment was made for two features of the Church building: the front entrance door and the tall windows running down each side of the rectangular shaped sanctuary space. The front door, when viewed from the interior is carved walnut. 

RIGHT: Fragments of the original amber-color glass from the 1934 Wintersburg Japanese Church building. It was intended to fill the sanctuary space with light and energy. (Photo, M. Urashima, 2016)

   The windows were amber-colored glass. The ancient Greek word for amber is "elektron" meaning sun. Ancient Greeks knew that amber, when rubbed, produces an electric charge. The use of the color amber in ancient religious settings is a reference to spiritual energy and light, the sun or fire, including its use in Zoroastrian temples. The symbolism of the color amber as relates to a Christian house of worship is referenced in the Bible (Ezekial 1:27) as representing a bright and overwhelming presence. When it came time to choose the glass for the windows of the 1934 Church building---which was washed with white paint on the interior and exterior---the color amber was chosen to fill the space with light and energy.

   The goal of completing construction by Thanksgiving was accomplished, with the official dedication of the Church building on December 10, 1934. Over 700 people attended the dedication event in Wintersburg Village, contributing that day an additional reported $667.29 toward the $5,500 budget to help with interior furnishings. 

LEFT: The program for the dedication ceremony of the Wintersburg Japanese Church on December 10, 1934. Charles Mitsuji Furuta, an elder with the mission and the first Japanese to be baptized as Christian in Orange County, spoke at the dedication which featured a violin solo, "Romance" by composer Johan Svendsen, by Furuta's niece, Sumi Akiyama. Sumi would marry Judge John Aiso, who directed the Military Intelligence Language School and was the highest ranking Japanese American in the U.S. Army during WWII. Listen to a version of "Romance." (Image courtesy of the Furuta family)

Reverend Kenji Kikuchi, who had been with the mission throughout the planning and building process said during his address that "Go Forward" had been the congregation's slogan as they continued fundraising and building through the Great Depression. Earlier clergy for the mission were at the dedication, including founder Reverend Barnabus H. Terasawa of San Francisco, Reverend Paul Nakamura of Los Angeles, and Reverend Watanabe of San Diego. 

   Another featured speaker was Hisamatsu Tamura on behalf of the Smeltzer Japanese Association in Wintersburg Village. Hisamatsu Tamura is the father of Stephen Kosaku Tamura for whom the West Justice Center in Westminster, California, was renamed on November 6, 2020. Historical background on Stephen Tamura provided by Historic Wintersburg was used in the renaming application that went before the California Judicial Council.

  The Santa Ana Register reported on December 10, 1934, that congratulatory telegrams were received from around California and that there were speakers and well-wishers from other Orange County and Los Angeles churches. The dedication program included official photographs and "motion pictures" were planned to have been filmed*, after which there was a reception serving "Japanese dainties and tea." 

     In its life, the 1934 Church would be witness to the upbringing of Fountain Valley's first mayor James Kanno, Orange County's first Japanese American attorney Stephen Tamura, community carnivals, marriages, funerals, and the interrogation of clergy and congregation by the FBI in 1942. The Church would be shuttered during the forced removal and incarceration of Orange County's Japanese American community during WWII, reopening in 1945. In 1948, the memorial services for SSgt. Kazuo Masuda, a hero of the "Go For Broke" 442nd Regimental Combat Team recognized in 1945 and again in 1988 by President Ronald Reagan, were held inside the Church with military honor guard. There are multiple Congressional Medal of Honor recipients among the congregants.

   Conceived prior to the Great Depression, the 1934 Wintersburg Japanese Church building--one of six historic structures on the endangered National Treasure Historic Wintersburg property--was born during hard times, and achieved through the perseverance and "go forward" mindset that would see the community through the years ahead.

ABOVE: An image from the Santa Ana Register, reporting on the dedication of the 1934 Church building of the Wintersburg Japanese Mission. (Santa Ana Register, December 10, 1934)

*Motion pictures referred to in the program for the December 10, 1934, dedication have to-date not been found. Please contact Historic Wintersburg if you have information.

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

The Wintersburg Mission

ABOVE: The Japanese Presbyterian Mission and manse on Wintersburg Avenue (now Warner Avenue), circa 1910. Courtesy of the Wintersburg Church. © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   "This Mission was opened on the Christmas season of 1904 by the members of the Westminster Presbyterian Church and Rev. Terazawa was the first Japanese pastor," according to a typewritten 1930 history of the Japanese Presbyterian Church of Wintersburg.  

   When the Church's historical summary was written--over eight decades ago--it already was described as "one of the oldest Japanese churches in Southern California." 

   Ten Japanese pastors had served the Mission by 1930, which was known to be the "only center of the Japanese community in this vicinity."  In Orange County, the Anaheim Japanese M.E. Church had served a smaller population of Japanese immigrants, about a fifth of the size of Wintersburg.

The beginnings of Wintersburg

  At the time the Wintersburg Mission was organized in 1904, the official census of Orange County still had not included a population count for Huntington Beach.  It wasn't until the 1910 census that Huntington Beach reached a notable 815 population (after officially incorporating in 1909).

   The Japanese Americans settling in North Orange County had, for the most part, migrated here for agricultural work, helping the "peatlands" of Wintersburg become one of the celery capitals of America.  Some had left Japan to avoid being drafted into the Imperial Army, others simply to find a better life.  Some were Christian of various denominations and some were Buddhist.

The celery trains
   The Los Angeles Herald reported on January 18, 1905, that the Southern Pacific Railroad was "running special trains loaded with celery and bound for eastern markets."  The Herald noted 25 to 30 car loads left daily on the rail line running down to the Wintersburg celery fields and Smeltzer packing station in present-day north Huntington Beach.

   This also was the time of St. Louis' Louisiana Purchase Exposition, a World's Fair at which California again made a big impression on winter-fatigued easterners.  In the same 1905 Los Angeles Herald edition, Charles L. Wilson, California's superintendent of the installation of exhibits at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, was quoted "everywhere I heard people talking about California."

   "When I left St. Louis, it was eight degrees below zero.  It was fifteen below at Kansas City, and colder as we came through Kansas, with snow and sleet all the way to Needles, 300 miles east of Los Angeles," continued Wilson.   Wilson's train arrived in San Bernardino at sunrise to clear, sunny skies.  "People on the train who had never before gazed upon California scenery, and were a little doubtful of the truth of some of the glowing stories they had heard of the glorious southland, when they looked out of the car windows this morning were in ecstasies of delight..."

   The Herald also reported tourist travel to Southern California was growing, packing the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads "to their fullest capacity.  The larger hotels are rapidly filling up"  and the Santa Fe "Pullman accommodations for lower berths on their limited out of Chicago have been exhausted..."

Reverend Kenji Kikuchi

   By 1930, when the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission began contemplating their 1934 church building effort, the population of Orange County's Japanese Americans had grown.  The Rev. Kenji Kikuchi, M.Th., became the pastor in1926, having completed seminary in Japan and theology studies at Princeton.  His report noted the "situation of the Japanese people in Orange County" as having a population of 2,000, "most of them farmers...about 350 families."

   Rev. Kikuchi's historical summary noted there were about 150 families in the immediate vicinity of Wintersburg.  "... Most of them are dry chili pepper farmers-they raise half million dollars a year production from peppers.  Also there are three bid (sic) gold fish farms owned by our church members."  These would have been the gold fish farms of C.M. Furuta--who donated the land for the Mission--and the Asari and Akiyama families of Wintersburg.

   In his 1981 oral history interview with Arthur Hansen, history professor with CSU Fullerton, Rev. Kikuchi remembers learning about Wintersburg, "After coming to California, I found a Japanese community I never knew existed and which very strongly needed a leader and pastor. I felt very deeply about such a mission.

Rev. Kikuchi recalls "the Japanese people or community wanted to bring in a minister who spoke English, who knew the United States. So we started. The community relation was very close, more familylike, and I had to help out the children, calling for a doctor or taking a patient to the hospital. Nobody could help but the minister, and he was in the best position to help out."

   "So many young people came to this small Wintersburg church in Orange County," continues Rev. Kikuchi, 83 years old at the time of his interview.  "It was the building behind the current (1934) building, very old. It was built in 1910, and my predecessor as pastor was Reverend Junzo Nakamura.  He was a very good leader, and it was kind of a painstaking job for a minister because it was not a formally organized church. We had to start from nothing and we had to teach many things."

   When Rev. Kikuchi arrived, Rev. Nakamura had already left for a ministry in San Diego and it was clear the Wintersburg Mission needed him, "...the corner lot where the church was located was overgrown with dry weeds. Then about a hundred Japanese people, Issei and Nisei, came to the area so I was deeply determined to take care of them."

   About two years after Rev. Kikuchi arrived at the Mission, it organized as a church, the Japanese Presbyterian Church of Wintersburg.

   "We planned a new building because the number of Sunday school children increased, and we used to go around the Talbert area to get the children in my Model-T Ford (laughter)--about nineteen children in an open car, and I drove around the surrounding farm land to get the Sunday school children here," continued Rev. Kikuchi.

Building a new Church during the Depression years

   The funds for the 1934 church building were raised--and almost lost--by Wintersburg's Japanese American community during the Great Depression.

   "We collected donations little by little. First, we deposited the money in the Huntington Beach Bank, a state bank. But in the prime of the Depression, the deposits were frozen," remembers Rev. Kikuchi.  "Charlie's (Ishii) father and I ran to the Huntington Beach 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. In this way, we collected small amounts of money little by little."

   Rev. Kikuchi stayed on as pastor at the Japanese Presbyterian Church until 1936, after the construction of the 1934 church building (in front of the 1910 building) on present-day Warner Avenue at Nichols Lane.  In 1942, he and his wife, Yoshi, were evacuated to the Poston, Arizona Relocation Center.  Interviewer Arthur Hansen recalls Rev. Kikuchi's discussion about the Japanese American experience in Orange County by noting that "Reverend Kikuchi radiated a warmth and good cheer rarely seen by me in any other people I have known..."

   "So for ten years I never got tired, never became disappointed, and thoroughly enjoyed myself," Rev. Kikuchi recalls of his time at the Japanese Presbyterian Church in Wintersburg, "most of the people enjoyed our lives with us like we were a family." 

The oral history interview with Reverend Kenji Kikuchi, M. TH. was conducted on August 26, 1981, in Rev. Kikuchi's Huntington Beach home 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 at http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft7d5nb3gn;NAAN=13030&chunk.id=d0e192&toc.id=&toc.depth=1&brand=calisphere&anchor.id=p1

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.