Two Decembers: 1934 and 1948

ABOVE: Eighty-three years ago, the Santa Ana Register reported on the gathering to dedicate the Wintersburg Japanese Church held on December 9, the second mission building and one of three buildings at Historic Wintersburg associated with the Wintersburg Japanese Mission. Already noted as one of the oldest Japanese missions in California, the congregation was marking its 30-year anniversary of the founding as they dedicated the Spanish Revival style church at the corner of present-day Warner Avenue and Nichols Lane. (Santa Ana Register, December 10, 1934)

   In December 1934, the communities of Wintersburg Village and Huntington Beach gathered to dedicate the newest house of worship for the Wintersburg Japanese Mission.  Formally recognized as a Church with the Presbyterian Church USA in 1930, the Wintersburg Japanese Mission was marking its 30th anniversary in 1934.

   The first Mission building also had opened in December, in 1909, followed shortly by the Manse (parsonage).  Reverend Joseph K. Inazawa and his wife, Kate Alice Goodman, were there for the 1910 dedication and services, as was Charles Furuta, the Furuta farm; and Reverend Terasawa and Dr. Ernest Adolphus Sturge, who had helped found the Wintersburg Japanese Mission in 1904. 

LEFT: The program for the Wintersburg Japanese Church dedication featured remarks by Church elders, including Charles Furuta and Kyutaro Ishii.  Charles and Yukiko's daughter, Kazuko (Kay), spoke on behalf of the Sunday school program, while her cousin, Sumi Akiyama played a violin solo.  The Treasurer's Report was delivered by Shuji Kanno, father of California's first Japanese American major, the first mayor of Fountain Valley, James Kanno. Note the program states "motion pictures to be taken". (Wintersburg Japanese Church dedication program, December 9, 1934. Courtesy of Furuta family.) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    The 1934 Wintersburg Japanese Church building is home to significant events that are part of the reason the Historic Wintersburg property is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Treasure. 
  
   It was home to the first Japanese American Citizen League meeting in Orange County. The Church and Mission buildings were shuttered during World War II incarceration, prompting the Presbyterian Church USA to formally apologize in 2014 for "abandonment" of the congregation.  The 1934 Church building is one of six historic structures that are part of the Furuta farm and Wintersburg Japanese Mission complex at National Treasure Historic Wintersburg. All six structures have been deemed restorable by the National Park Service and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. 

RIGHT: The first meeting of the Japanese American Citizens League in Orange County, California, is held in the Wintersburg Japanese Church, one year after the church building was dedicated. (Santa Ana Register, January 28, 1935)

   Fourteen years after the dedication of the Church building in 1934--and after Orange County's Japanese American community had returned from World War II incarceration--the Church held a program of national significance.  The body of Orange County hero, Staff-Sgt. Kazuo Masuda with the "Go For Broke" 442nd Regimental Combat Team, was returned home from Europe.  He had been killed in action in Italy in 1944, and--in an event that received national media coverage in 1945--Staff-Sgt. Kazuo Masuda's family was presented with his Distinguished Service Cross by General Joe Stillwell and an Army captain who would one day be President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

   On August 27, 1944, Staff-Sgt. Kazuo Masuda, a graduate of Huntington Beach High School, voluntarily led two men on a night patrol across the Arno river and through the heavily-mined and booby-trapped north bank. Hearing movements to his right he ordered his men to cover him while he crawled forward and discovered that a strong enemy force had surrounded them. 

    Realizing that he was trapped, he ordered his men to withdraw while he engaged two enemy automatic weapons. At the sacrifice of his life, he enabled his comrades to escape with valuable information which materially aided the successful crossing of the Arno river.
Finally, in 1948, Staff-Sgt. Kazuo Masuda was returned home to be laid to rest. 

LEFT: The services for Staff-Sgt. Kazuo Masuda noted in the Santa Ana Register.  His grave site at Westminster Memorial Park in Westminster, California, is home to the annual Memorial Day program with the Kazuo Masuda Memorial VFW Post 3670. (Santa Ana Register, December 10, 1948)

   The funeral services were held in the Wintersburg Japanese Church in 1948 with a military honor guard. The funeral procession made its way down Beach Boulevard to the Westminster Memorial Park for the burial, where Marines from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station fired a 21-gun salute.

ABOVE: The funeral procession for Staff-Sgt. Kazuo Masuda, a member of the "Go For Broke" 442nd Regimental Combat Team, makes its way north on Beach Boulevard from the services at the Wintersburg Japanese Church to the Westminster Memorial Park on December 9, 1948. Staff-Sgt. Kazuo Masuda was remembered by President Ronald Reagan in 1988.  (Courtesy of Dennis Masuda) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    In 1988, at the official signing of the Civil Liberties Act, Staff-Sgt. Kazuo Masuda and his family were remembered by President Ronald Reagan.  

   Watch President Reagan speak in 1988 about visiting the Masuda family decades earlier in 1945:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcaQRhcBXKY  (Video courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

   Members of the Masuda family and Clarence Nishizu, a congregant of the Wintersburg Japanese Mission, were at the signing with President Reagan, who had visited the Masuda family when he was a young Army captain at their Talbert farmhouse with General Joe Stillwell in 1945. Captain Ronald Reagan and General Joe Stillwell were there to award posthumously the Distinguished Service Cross for Staff-Sgt. Kazuo Masuda.

RIGHT: The annual Memorial Day program at the grave site of Staff-Sgt. Kazuo Masuda in Westminster Memorial Park with the Kazuo Masuda Memorial VFW Post 3670. (Photo, M. Urashima, May 25, 2015) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    Today, the 1934 Wintersburg Japanese Church building remains standing and is one of six historic buildings that are part of National Treasure Historic Wintersburg, listed as one of America's Most Endangered Historic Places in 2014 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and listed as one of Orange County's Most Endangered in 2017 by Preserve Orange County.  The grave site of Staff-Sgt. Kazuo Masuda is home to the annual Memorial Day services held by Kazuo Masuda Memorial VFW Post 3670. The 21-gun salute remains part of the annual Memorial Day program, at which all military veterans are honored for their valor and service. 

ABOVE: The Wintersburg Japanese Church on dedication day, December 9, 1934. The congregation fund raised and built their second church building during the Great Depression, a major effort in the rural farming community of Wintersburg Village. (Photograph courtesy of Wintersburg Church) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

© 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. 

In support of the Tuna Canyon Coalition; Tuna Canyon's connection with Historic Wintersburg

The Tuna Canyon Coalition's event was held to raise matching funds for a grant received by the National Park Service for a museum-quality traveling exhibit. The historic and cultural monument at Tuna Canyon--approved by the Los Angeles City Council in 2013--has been in limbo, due to litigation by the property owner. (Photo, M. Urashima, August 29, 2015) © All rights reserved.

  Historic Wintersburg was part of the Tuna Canyon Coalition's August fundraising event at the Nishii Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. There is a shared history.

   The Tuna Canyon Detention Station was a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp taken over by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Immigration and Naturalization Service on December 8, 1941, following the attack by Japan at Pearl Harbor.  A hastily established prison camp, guards were garnered from the U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Army. By December 18, 1941, there were 70 Americans of Japanese descent detained at Tuna Canyon, which would also receive those of German and Italian descent, and Peruvians of Japanese descent. Hundreds would follow, eventually transferred to military detention centers in Missoula, Montana and Lordsburg, New Mexico.

LEFT: A meditation garden at the Nishii Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, where the Tuna Canyon Coalition event was held. (Photo, M. Urashima, August 29, 2015) © All rights reserved.

   On August 29, 2015, a thousand came to raise funds for a traveling exhibit, remembering those imprisoned at the Tuna Canyon Detention Station. Accused on the basis of their ethnicity, many of those incarcerated were Buddhist priests, teachers, business owners, civic leaders, and Christian clergy. 

   The connection to Historic Wintersburg? Charles Furuta was confined at Tuna Canyon, before he was incarcerated at a military detention center in Lordsburg, New Mexico. Driving to Tajunga from Huntington Beach, his family was only able to talk to him through a fence.

RIGHT: The sculpture, "Endure" by Ernie Jane Nishii, was displayed at the event. Nishii "grew up in Tule Lake Segregation Center during WWII, where she had nightmares." (Photo, M. Urashima, August 29, 2015) © All rights reserved.

   During an oral history conducted in 2013 for Historic Wintersburg, Etsuko Furuta Fukushima recalled visiting her father at Tuna Canyon. Driving from Huntington Beach to Tuna Canyon today might take at least two hours, depending on Southern California traffic. In 1942, it would have been an all-day effort to get there and back before curfew.

   "I remember the fence, the wire fence," recalled Etsuko, an alumni of Huntington Beach High School and age 92 when speaking with Professor Emeritus Arthur Hansen, on behalf of Historic Wintersburg. "And I don't remember we were able to talk to him through the fence, but I don't think we were able to get inside."

   "He was expecting the FBI to take him, because he was a leader of the community, he was president of the Japanese Association," Yukiko Furuta recalled of her husband, Charles, during her oral history interview in 1982. "So, he had already packed a suitcase with warm clothing, and was ready."

LEFT: David Ono, anchorman for KABC Channel 7 in Los Angeles, California, acted as master of ceremonies. (Photo, M. Urashima, August 29, 2015) © All rights reserved.

   Charles Furuta was taken to Tuna Canyon several months after Pearl Harbor. Yukiko Furuta recalled it was around February 22 or 23 of 1942.  They were expecting the FBI and both were "in fear", she explained during her interview.  

   The FBI arrived a few days after President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, mandating the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast.  Charles Furuta was interrogated by the FBI in the sun porch of the 1912 bungalow he had built for his bride, Yukiko, one of the six structures that remain at Historic Wintersburg.  He was first taken to the Huntington Beach jail and then to Tuna Canyon.

   "How do you feel about the whole thing of seeing your father on the other side of the fence?" asked Historic Wintersburg's interviewer Hansen of Etsuko Furuta Fukushima.

   "I thought, 'For heaven's sake, he couldn't be a spy,' but then the FBI were wrong," explained Etsuko. 

RIGHT: Photograph taken backstage by Historic Wintersburg author, Mary Adams Urashima, while waiting to be introduced by David Ono (at left). Ernie Nishii (at right) remarked on his family's personal connection to Tuna Canyon. (Photo, M. Urashima, August 29, 2015) © All rights reserved.

   Like other Japanese Americans, Charles Furuta was never found to have committed any act against the United States.  The majority of those incarcerated were American cititzens and had known no other country. The Issei--like Charles Furuta, who had arrived in 1900--were prevented citizenship, but had put down roots in America, established businesses, raised children.

   Charles Furuta was identified first due to his ancestry, then as a possible leader by the FBI due to his land ownership, his activity with the Wintersburg Japanese Church, and his civic involvement with the Smeltzer Japanese Association, which met in Wintersburg Village above the Tashima Market. A 1912 photograph shows Charles Furuta with a group of Huntington Beach mayors and other local leaders, at a meeting to raise funds to rebuild the Huntington Beach pier. The very actions he had taken over the prior four decades to become American worked against him in 1942.

   Yukiko Furuta recalled that Reverend Sohei Kowta was interrogated by the FBI at the Wintersburg Japanese Church (also one of the six structures remaining at Historic Wintersburg), but managed to delay his removal so he could accompany his congregation.

   "The FBI came to the church to take Reverend Kowta, but then the minister said that all the husbands had been taken and the wives were having trouble. If he would be taken, no one would take care of them," said Yukiko in 1982. "So the FBI agent called the office and talked to the people at the office. Then they decided not to take him. So he could stay in the Japanese community."

VIDEO: The Thousand Cranes dance by Nancy Hayata, accompanied by June Kuramoto of Hiroshima. Nancy Hayata is holding orizuru, origami crane, a symbol of peace and related to the real-life story of Sadako, an atomic bomb survivor (known as hibakusha). A poem about Sadako has her saying, "I shall write peace upon your wings, and you shall fly around the world..." (Video, M. Urashima, August 29, 2015) © All rights reserved.

   The charismatic Reverend Kowta would deliver a sermon prior to his congregation's forced removal, invoking Abraham, "the great migration leader."

    "Every crisis is a testing time of one's character," said Kowta in 1942, prior to joining his entire congregation as they left California for confinement in Arizona. "Selfish people, during a crisis, show their selfishness to a greater measure than they do in ordinary times.  Generous people reveal their generosity to a greater degree than they do at other times."

   "Give us a desert. We shall make it a beautiful garden; give us a wasted land, we shall change it into a productive field; give us a wilderness, we shall convert it into a fruitful orchard," said Kowta, who would unify many of the religious groups at Poston. "Provide for our children competent teachers, regardless of the buildings we shall have, we shall make ours one of the finest schools in the country."

LEFT: Families who were confined at the Tuna Canyon Detention Station gather for a group photograph at the end of the event. In front, Dr. Lloyd Hitt of Little Landers Historical Society, and Minoru Tanai, UCLA Japanese American Studies Chair Committee, both leaders in the Tuna Canyon preservation effort. In the top row, Nancy Oda, chair of the Tuna Canyon Coalition, with her family, descendants of the Reverend Guzei Nishii, a respected Buddhist minister from San Diego who was confined at Tuna Canyon. (Photo, M. Urashima, August 29, 2015) © All rights reserved.

   Yukiko Furuta explained that in the evening they "pulled the blind and shade and turned out the light and went to bed early," following the curfew instructions to everyone on the West Coast. After Charles Furuta was taken to Tuna Canyon, their son, Raymond--engaged to Martha at the time--thought he should get married quickly "because otherwise they might not be able to get married."

   Raymond and Martha were married in the Wintersburg Church by Reverend Kowta.  Later when the Furuta family arrived at the Colorado River Relocation Center at Poston, Arizona--a bleak desert, as described in the sermon by Reverend Kowta--the Wintersburg pastor would marry Etsuko Furuta to her fiance, Dan Fukushima, in one of the Poston barracks.

RIGHT: What remains of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station, now a golf course recently purchased by a home developer, Snowball West. Tuna Canyon was designated a historic site by the City of Los Angeles City Council in a unanimous vote. The one-acre cultural monument under the oak trees at Tuna Canyon has been delayed due to Snowball West's lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles alleging illegal historic-cultural monument status. Their writ was denied as of mid August 2015, allowing the Tuna Canyon historic-cultural monument effort to continue. (Photo, M. Urashima, June 2015) © All rights reserved.

   During Etsuko Furuta Fukushima's oral history interview in 2013, she was asked, "you had your life to look forward to, and they had their life very abruptly interrupted. How did your parents get affected by--I'm sure you thought about this -- how did it affect them?"

   "Well, after working...and building up what they had to have it all torn down and then start all over again," Etsuko replied, "That was just terrible."

LEFT: The iron oxide red siding of the 1912 Furuta bungalow at Historic Wintersburg, where Charles Furuta was interrogated by the FBI before he was taken to Tuna Canyon. A charming California cottage, with monumental civil liberties history, the Furuta home is one of six important structures at Historic Wintersburg. (Photo, M. Urashima, 2014) © All rights reserved.

   Charles Furuta would stay at Tuna Canyon three weeks before he was taken to a military confinement center in Lordsburg, New Mexico.  It would be one year before he was reunited with his family at Poston.

   Yukiko visited Charles two times at Tuna Canyon, each time traveling first to Santa Ana (seat of Orange County government) for permission from officials to visit her husband.  After the long drive to Tajunga from Huntington Beach, Yukiko was only allowed to talk to her husband for ten minutes, speaking to each other through the fence. It was enough time for Charles to tell her to keep the family together and leave California with the others, per the federal order.

ABOVE: The whispering oak trees at the former Tuna Canyon Detention Station. (Photo, M. Urashima, 2015) © All rights reserved.

   By 1960, Tuna Canyon Detention Station buildings were torn down, erasing evidence of the prison camp.  It became the Verdugo Hills Golf Course (before the sale to Snowball West), retaining the stately oak trees that were present during WWII and are a prominent feature at the property today.

RIGHT: From the Call Leader newspaper in Elwood, Indiana, an account that was shared around the country of the whispering trees of Los Tunas Canyon (Tuna Canyon).  The article notes, "the noise made by one leaf was so slight that it could not be heard a foot away, but the thousands grating continuously together kept the sound vibrations in such constant motion that their sigh was heard above the ordinary rustling of the leaves of the chaparral."  It is the many thousand whispers of yesterday and today that can bring voice to the story of Tuna Canyon. (Image: The Elwood Call Leader, Elwood, Indiana, January 16, 1918)

   There is something about the trees in Tuna Canyon.  Between 1917 and 1918, a news report circulated around the country in which a hiker reported "whispering trees" in "Los Tunas canyon" (one example, the Arizona Republican, "Finds Trees that Seem to Whisper", November 10, 1918).  Tuna Canyon's trees continue to communicate to those who plan the historic-cultural monument. Their theme for the planned traveling exhibit: Only the Oaks Remain.

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.

Dear Mr. Elliot

  Among the touching artifacts archived relating to Japanese American incarceration during World War II are those relating to the interaction with teachers.   

LEFT: A letter posted from the Poston Arizona Relocation Center, May 1942, from Wintersburg goldfish farmer Harley Asari to Ray Elliott, then vice principal at Huntington Beach High School. (Image, M. Urashima) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   The teachers knew their students, had watched them grow up, and knew their parents. In farm country, everyone knew each other's families and their histories. The virtual lifeline provided to the incarcerated by teachers helped keep Issei and Nisei connected with the outside world and focused on better days ahead.  

   In Orange County, we know of Anita Shepardson, Remembering Ma Shep, http://historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/02/remembering-ma-shep-on-first-floor-of.html, and Georgia Day Robertson, Orange County author and educator Georgia Day Robertson: Moved to write by her time in Poston, http://historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/03/part-three-of-our-interview-series.html

   Add to that list Ray Elliott and teachers at Huntington Beach High School.

Huntington Beach High School
   Most of the Japanese community in Wintersburg, Talbert and the surrounding area attended Huntington Beach High School.  
  
   Known in its early years as  the "School on Wheels," Huntington Beach High School struggled in its early years to find a home.  First opening in Los Alamitos in 1903, the high school moved to Garden Grove in 1904, and then to Wintersburg in 1905.  Classes in Wintersburg were held in the armory building at the intersection of present-day Warner Avenue and Gothard Avenue.

   Writing in the mid 1950s about the school's history in Wintersburg, Raymond M. Elliott wrote, "although the enrollment was very small, Mr. Solomon introduced basketball. He induced the six boys in the school to participate in this sport and succeeded in defeating every other school with which the team competed."  

   Elliott started as a mathematics and history teacher at the high school in 1923, and was promoted to vice principal in 1929 and principal in 1945. (Note: the letters are addressed to "Mr. Elliot"; school records indicate it was "Elliott.")

RIGHT: The Sycamore Hall armory building was moved from Talbert (Fountain Valley) to Wintersburg and served as the Huntington Beach Union High School in 1905.  In 1904--the year the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission was founded--meetings were held in the armory to discuss building churches in Wintersburg.  Attendees at meetings in the building sat on celery crates. (Photo, Santa Ana Public Library)

    

   The high school was on the move again in 1906, settling into the basement of Huntington Beach's Methodist Auditorium until moving to their permanent home on Main Street in 1908.   Students from the rural countryside made their way to school in the back of a two-ton truck purchased by the HBUHSD, which also picked up students arriving by "electric car" from Newport Beach and Balboa.

   Huntington Beach High School rosters would include names of families known in Wintersburg, Talbert and Huntington Beach:  Asari,  Furuta, Kitajima, Masuda,  Tanamachi, Tashima, Tatsukawa.

The Asari family    

   Tsurumatsu "T.M." Asari is reported in oral histories as being the first Japanese to arrive in Orange County.  He is one of two Japanese in Wintersburg-Huntington Beach area to have bought land prior to the Alien Land Law of 1913, the other being Charles Mitsuji "C.M." Furuta.   

   T.M. Asari owned his property by at least 1903, as there is a record of discussion in the City of Huntington Beach archives between Asari, as a landowner, and the Talbert Drainage District on January 1, 1904.  His property was on the north side of Wintersburg (now Warner) Avenue.  In addition to farming, Asari ran the Asari Market, later owned by the Tashima family.  

   Asari helped new Japanese immigrants establish themselves, hosting the Smeltzer Japanese Association meetings in the second floor of his market.  He also encouraged civic pride efforts, such as the Smeltzer Flying Company (The Smeltzer Flying Company, http://historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/04/smeltzer-flying-company-members-of.html)

   Asari also was one of Wintersburg's three goldfish farmers.  As a teenager, Harley Asari--born in Wintersburg in 1912--was already helping his father with the business (Goldfish on Wintersburg Avenue, http://historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/02/goldfish-on-wintersburg-avenue.html).   

March 1942 and rumors

   Ellen McCarty mentions the Asari family and local goldfish farms in her 1999 Waves of Time column for the Huntington Beach Independent.  

   "On March 27, 1942, General DeWitt ordered all Japanese to be removed from Orange County.  The German and Italian immigrants were allowed to stay.  By the end of the week, all Japanese who had registered at Huntington Beach were loaded onto buses and sent to the Poston Relocation Center in Arizona under military escort," writes McCarty.

Left: Letter from Attorney General Frances Biddle to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, stating many of the dangers cited in General John L. De Witt's final report on Japanese evacuation were "chimeric," April 12, 1944. (Image, Densho.org)

   One of the rumors reported in a California State University-Fullerton oral history conducted forty-four years ago in 1968 with Lee Chamness, Jr. relates to the local goldfish farmers.  Chamness was the son of a Huntington Beach city councilman who resigned office to become the town civilian defense coordinator and assisted the FBI arrest local Japanese, including those in Wintersburg. 

   "...during the outbreak of the war (Wintersburg) had a tremendous goldfish farm with ponds on the ground, and they were all covered with a netting," Chamness--10-years-old in 1942--told his interviewer, John Sprout.  His interview reflected childhood memories of adult conversations, rife with rumors of the time.

   "As it happened, all this netting that was covering these ponds were radio antennas," said Chamness.  "They had a communication setup with Japan that was unbeatable. They could really talk."

 "Two major fisheries owned by Japanese residents, Asari and the Orange County Fish Hatchery, were seized and searched," reported columnist McCarty decades later.  "Nothing suspicious was found, but the owners and many other Japanese lost their property and businesses during the war..."

   It is important to note that all three of Wintersburg's Japanese goldfish farmers returned after World War II confinement and none were ever charged or convicted of any wrongdoing. No Japanese American was ever convicted of acts against the United States, per Congressional findings of the 1980s.

ABOVE: An architectural rendering of the first Huntington Beach High School building on Main Street in 1908. (Image, Los Angeles Herald, April 5, 1908)

Finishing high school 

   By the time of evacuation in 1942, T.M. Asari was 71 years old and had been a U.S. resident for 42 years--over half his life.  Harley Asari, a Nisei, was 30 years old and would have known Ray Elliott from his high school years.  On a 1920 "Huntington Beach - Newport oil fields" map, there also is a notation of an Elliott owning land immediately adjacent to the Asari family on Wintersburg Avenue.

ABOVE: Harley Asari (#10), Toshiko Furuta (#31), and Lily Kikuchi (#33), the 6th and 7th grade of Oceanview Grammar School, Wintersburg (Warner) Avenue and Beach Boulevard, circa 1927.  (Photo courtesy of Douglas McIntosh) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    Ray Elliott had become vice principal of Huntington Beach High School and watched his Japanese American students--who he had known on an almost daily basis--leave for internment.  Huntington Beach High School administration and teachers worked with students so they could graduate.  

    
   Yoshiyuki Tashima, a Huntington Beach High School senior, recalled in his 1974 oral history interview with Pat Tashima for CSU Fullerton that his family had to evacuate one month before his high school graduation.  He "wrote to the principal of Huntington Beach High School (then McClelland G. Jones) to inquire about my graduating with the class, and he wrote back saying all I had to do was complete one course, and that was civics, and they asked me to write a paper on the relocation camp."

  

   "So I wrote that and turned it in and they gave me a passing grade," said Tashima, whose family owned the market in Wintersburg once owned by the Asari family.  "So I was able to get my diploma with my graduating class."

   Tashima also kept in touch with his family's neighbors, the Renfros, who he had known since second grade and considered "my second parents."  His friend and classmate Ed Renfro--a 1942 Huntington Beach High School graduate--went on to become a well-known artist and children's book illustrator, after serving in the air force in Germany during World War II.

    
   Kiyoko Tatsukawa, another Huntington Beach High School student, continued her studies at Poston and became a nurse's aid in the Poston Hospital in 1943.   The War Relocation Authority photographed her smiling in a nurse's uniform.

LEFT: Kiyoko Tatuskawa at Poston Arizona Relocation Center (Photo, War Relocation Authority) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   Aiko Tanamachi Endo remembered in her 1983 interview for the Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project, that all the Japanese American children in her Seal Beach community attended Huntington Beach High School.  Endo had to evacuate in her junior year.

   "...It was an enjoyable three years...high school was very pleasant because my parents encouraged us to participate in whatever activities we were interested in," Endo told her interviewer.  " After school, they had a girls' athletic association. I participated in and lettered in every sport, including basketball, baseball, and hockey. I had swimming in gym...I played on the tennis team. My brother also stayed after school for football and baseball but he broke his collarbone playing football, so my parents wouldn't let him play football any longer. Instead he helped with the coaching."

   Endo remembers one of her Huntington Beach High School teachers wanted to personally intervene to stop her evacuation.

   "...I can remember when we found out that we had to evacuate, how our Latin and algebra teacher, Miss Margaret Bliss--she was a dear soul--just thought it was terrible that we had to evacuate. So she said, 'I'm going to find out if I can keep you girls with me,'" Endo recalled.  Bliss was noted as a University of Minnesota graduate who had begun teaching at the high school in 1927.

   "There was another friend, Toyoko Kitajima, a Nisei, also. We both had about the same classes and we were both in her algebra and her Latin classes, so (Margaret Bliss) said, 'You girls shouldn't have to leave. I'm going to find out if I can keep you with me. I'll be responsible for you,'" continued Endo.  "She was a dear. We realized there was just no way. I told her I was sure that there was no way she could keep us." 

   Endo finished high school in the Poston Arizona Relocation Center. 

ABOVE: Another letter from Harley Asari to Ray Elliott, from the Poston Arizona Relocation Center in February 1943.  By then, Ray Elliott had provided his home address to Harley Asari.  In 1944, Harley was permitted to leave Poston on work furlough in Colorado. (Image M. Urashima. Courtesy  DK Enterprise, www.dickkeiser.com) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   The Asaris returned to their property and goldfish farm in Wintersburg after the war.  Like the Furutas and the Akiyamas, the Asaris found their ponds in poor condition, filled with weeds and silt.  They started over and recovered the ponds, operating a hatchery business well after Wintersburg was annexed into Huntington Beach in 1957-1958.
   Ray Elliott went on to become principal of Huntington Beach High School, then superintendent of the Huntington Beach Union High School District, and helped advocate for the creation of Orange Coast College.

   The contents of the letters from Harley Asari to Ray Elliott are unknown.  What we do know is that Elliott was among the educators that represented comfort and support for those far from their Orange County home.

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

 A note of thanks

When Dick Keiser of Silverdale, Washington, heard the story behind the envelope (left)---that it was one of Historic Wintersburg's goldfish farmers writing from internment to a Huntington Beach High School principal ---he generously donated the envelope to Historic Wintersburg.   This artifact is now back home in Huntington Beach, awaiting future historical exhibition. (Image, M. Urashima) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Special thanks to Dick Keiser, DK Enterprise, Silverdale, Washington.


© 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.  

Seventy years ago

Fountain Valley resident Masuo "Mas" Masuda holds a photo of his brother, Kazuo "Kaz" Masuda.  Kaz Masuda was a member of the "Go For Broke" 442nd, killed in Italy during WWII.  Both Mas and Kaz attended Huntington Beach High School--both on the football team--and the Masuda family were congregants of the Wintersburg Mission.  Both were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.  The Masuda family was first confined in Rohwer, Arkansas, then later at Gila River in Arizona. (Photo courtesy of Orange County Register)

      This week marks the 70th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which forcibly removed Japanese-Americans from the West Coast into confinement at ten major camps---Tule Lake, Minadoka, Heart Mountain, Grenada, Topaz, Rohwer, Jerome, Gila River, Poston, Manzanar---and a numerous small detention centers, military and immigration centers.  The majority---although not all---of the residents of Wintersburg Village, Huntington Beach, and Orange County were sent to the Colorado River Relocation Center at Poston, Arizona.

   Of Poston, Wintersburg-born Yoshiyuki Tashima recalls in his 1974 oral history interview with Pat Tashima for CSU Fullerton, "Well, if you like dust, it's a great place. If you like hot weather, it's a great place. If you like rattlesnakes, it's a great place."

   Tashima had attended Ocean View Grammer School and was a student at Huntington Beach High School when his family was forced to leave California for incarceration at Poston. 

   "...I wrote to the principal of Huntington Beach High School to inquire about my graduating with the class, and he wrote back saying all I had to do was complete one course, and that was civics, and they asked me to write a paper on the relocation camp," remembers Tashima.  "So I wrote that and turned it in and they gave me a passing grade. So I was able to get my diploma with my graduating class."  

   Tashima later served in the U.S. Army, "Well, I thought it was my duty; after all, I was born in this country and ninety percent of the other Japanese American kids felt the same way."

  On this Day of Remembrance anniversary of Executive Order 9066, we remember some of the alumni from Huntington Beach High School, all U.S.-born citizens, incarcerated during World War II due to their ancestry.

"Former (Wintersburg) resident, Takayuki Tashima, volunteered from the Poston Relocation Center and is topping beets in the fields near Milliken, Colorado." (UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library)

"Kiyoko Tatsukawa, former high school student from Huntington Beach, California, and a graduate of the spring 1943 class in Nurse's Aid at the Poston Hospital. Pretty Kiyoko is shown demonstrating her most charming bed-side manner, before administering medicine to the fortunate patient." (UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library)

"Harley Asari, left, relocatee from the Poston, Arizona Relocation Center, and Kenneth Jimbo, a voluntary evacuee from Huntington, California, shown at their work at the U.S. Foundry at Denver. They are among approximately 25 Japanese-Americans employed at the foundry, which applies strategic materials to war plants which are producing large quantities of materials for the armed forces. Asari is a former resident of Huntington Beach, California, where he ran a gold fish hatchery before evacuation. He was evacuated directly from Huntington Beach to Poston." (UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library)

The full interview with Yoshiyuki Tashima, conducted by Pat Tashima for California State University - Fullerton, can be viewed at http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft809nb3zk;NAAN=13030&chunk.id=d0e119&toc.id=&toc.depth=1&brand=calisphere&anchor.id=p1#X

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