Little Tokyo Historical Society: Sharing history and talking preservation at Historic Wintersburg

ABOVE: Yukio Kawaratani leads the group from Los Angeles-based Little Tokyo Historical Society through the tall grass toward the 1912 Furuta bungalow. Behind them at center is the 1910 Wintersburg Japanese Mission and, to the right) the 1934 Wintersburg Japanese Church.  More than a century of history with many connections with Little Tokyo history. (Photo, M. Urashima, April 8, 2017) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ©

   Members of the Little Tokyo Historical Society (LTHS), http://www.littletokyohs.org/, spent a day in Huntington Beach, touring Historic Wintersburg and discussing shared history. Formed in 2006, LTHS is focused on the history of the Little Tokyo Historic District in downtown Los Angeles, California.  

   LTHS was one of the first supporters of Historic Wintersburg and our partner in the first fundraiser in 2012, a red carpet screening in Orange County of the film, Lil Tokyo Reporter, about civil rights attorney and newspaper publisher Sei Fujii.  Read more at http://historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-sei-fujii-legacy-little-tokyo-and.html

   Our thanks to Little Tokyo Historical Society for their longstanding solidarity and support, historical insight, and advocacy for the preservation of Historic Wintersburg!

ABOVE: Tadashi Kowta shares his memories of living in the manse (parsonage) and life in Wintersburg Village. His father was the Reverend Sohei Kowta, the clergy for the Wintersburg Japanese Church from 1938 to 1942.  The Kowtas were incarcerated at the Colorado River Relocation Center (Poston), Arizona, along with the majority of those from Orange County.  The Kowta family story is at http://historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2013/02/reverend-sohei-kowta-sunday-before.html  (Photo, M. Urashima, April 8, 2017)  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ©

ABOVE: LTHS members make their way through the nopal ("prickly pear" cactus) on the south side of the Furuta barn.  The nopal were planted by employees of Rainbow Environmental, the trash company that purchased the property in 2004, and are not original to the farm.  The nopal is are on land once covered with goldfish ponds.  (Photo, M. Urashima, April 8, 2017)  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ©

LEFT: LTHS members at Historic Wintersburg with preservation chair Mary Urashima (back left) and new task force member and Huntington Beach resident Frankie Edeza (far right).  Little Tokyo is a National Park Service historic district which, prior to World War II, was home to the largest Japanese American community in the United States.  Prior to World War II incarceration, Little Tokyo covered three square miles in downtown Los Angeles and had multiple kenjin-kai (mutual aid associations) representing 40 of Japan's 46 prefectures.  Read more about Little Tokyo's history on the National Park Service website at https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/asian_american_and_pacific_islander_heritage/Little-Tokyo-Historic-District.htm  (Photo courtesy of Michael Okamura, Little Tokyo Historical Society, April 8, 2017) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ©

RIGHT: Little Tokyo is home to the Japanese American National Museum, http://www.janm.org/, which has hosted book signings and presentations for Historic Wintersburg, as well as the premier screening of the  documentary film, Our American Family: The Furutas of Historic Wintersburg, before it aired nationally on PBS.  (Photo, M. Urashima, 2016) 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.

The Sei Fujii legacy, Little Tokyo and Wintersburg

"Sei Fujii lived spectacularly and died spectacularly. It's like an opera," says Fumiko Carole Fujita, a founding member of the Little Tokyo Historical Society. 
                                                                                      Pacific Citizen, September 2, 2011


~Updated March 2015~

   In a unique collaboration, the Little Tokyo Historical Society, along with the producers, director and cast of the new film, Lil Tokyo Reporter, are coming to aid the preservation efforts of Historic Wintersburg.  

   Sei Fujii, on whom the narrative film is based, must be smiling.  

   The Pacific Citizen describes Sei Fujii's life, "with Depression-era drama, violent run-ins with gangster gamblers, stabbings, shootings, Supreme Court battles, a dramatic death — and not just one, but two scandalous lovers — (his) life has the makings of a juicy soap opera, or at least an interesting documentary."

The story of Sei Fujii
    Sei Fujii arrived in the United States in 1903.  Earning a law degree in 1911 from USC, he battled to protect Japanese American farmers, like those in Wintersburg.   Unable to practice law because he was a non-citizen, Sei Fujii started the newspaper, Kashu Mainichi, and began educating the Japanese community.  

   Through his newspaper, Sei Fujii warned farmers of gangsters running the Little Tokyo Club.   Many of the single, Japanese male farmers looking for a place to eat, drink sake and socialize were losing all their money in rigged card games.  Sei Fujii contronted the corruption, as relayed in Lil Tokyo Reporter.  

  What happened next has the makings of a great movie----and, it is real life.  The gangsters running the Little Tokyo Club tried to kill him.  Sei Fujii--trained in judo--fought them off and managed to survive.  Carol Fujita, one of the film's producers and a key researcher on Sei Fujii's life, said he was "found on Second Street near First in front of the New York Hotel by a pimp."  The pimp took him to the Japanese Hospital he had helped found in 1929. 

   Sei Fujii continued reaching out to the Japanese community to educate them and help them assimilate to American life.  He was known to travel to Orange County to meet with local farmers.

   With World War II, his active role in the Japanese community led to incarceration at the  Department of Justice Detention Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  (Note: Fountain Valley's first mayor James Kanno's father, Shuji Kanno, and goldfish farmer Charles Mitsuji Furuta---both Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission congregants---were taken to the U.S. Army's Lordsburg, New Mexico, detention center before being allowed to join their families at the Poston Arizona Internment Center.)

   Upon his release in 1946, Sei Fujii famously purchased a small piece of land in Los Angeles County and challenged California's Alien Land Law of 1913.  Through his efforts--and that of his long-time law school colleague and friend, J. Marion Wright--the law was overturned by the California Supreme Court in 1952.  Two years later, and only 51 days after being granted U. S. citizenship, he died.

ABOVE: Little Tokyo, circa 1935, the time period of Lil Tokyo Reporter. (Photo, Frasher Foto Collection, Pomona Public Library)

Memories of Little Tokyo
   Wintersburg farmers worked long days, so a trip to Little Tokyo was a special occasion.  Yukiko Furuta, Clarence Nishizu and Henry Kiyomi Akiyama, all Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission congregants, talked about Little Tokyo in their 1982 oral history interviews*.  Akiyama said he traveled into Los Angeles a couple times a month to watch baseball.

   "Other people from (Wintersburg) went to Los Angeles often, mostly to buy clothes or to see movies, and some people visited their relatives," explained Akiyama.  "There was already an established Japan Town in Los Angeles, which wasn't yet called Little Tokyo; the people called it Nihonjin Machi at that time, and it was already the center of Japanese laborers, who stayed in Imperial Valley in May and moved to Fresno in July or to Smeltzer (next to Wintersburg in North Huntington Beach) in October to work on farms." 

   Yukiko Furuta remembered living in a hotel in Little Tokyo in 1912, while her husband, Charles Mitsuji Furuta, built their new home in Wintersburg.  New to America, she ventured out to  Fugetsu-do, a Japanese confectionary store, and went  back to the hotel room to enjoy the treats.  She recalled her husband leaving her money for sweets when he left for work in Huntington Beach.  Later, living in Wintersburg and a little more acclimated to America, Yukiko Furuta would ride the Pacific Electric Railroad into Little Tokyo for shopping.

Left: Fugetsu-do opened in 1903 and still exists in Little Tokyo, an historic, artisan sweet shop.  Now at 315 E. First Street, http://www.fugetsu-do.com/  The mochi is worth the trip.

   "Let me tell you a little about that area during the time we lived there. Transportation in Little Tokyo was by yellow streetcar," relayed Nishizu.  "I remember that all fire engines were drawn by horses, not mechanical engines. There were two to three teams of horses in front of the fire engine which had a big water tank in the middle of the fire wagon. When there was a fire, the wagon rang a bell like the church bell."

    "I was born in an apartment building on the southwest corner of Jackson Street and Central Avenue. On the south side of this street, just north of the present Los Angeles police station's parking lot, there was a two-story building with a big community hall, where they used to have shibai, Japanese shows," continued Nishizu, who moved to Orange County as a small child.  "I remember taking a box lunch, bento, like they do in Japan, and watching Kabuki plays."

   Nishizu remembered Sei Fujii coming to Orange County and recalled the Little Tokyo gambling that concerned him.

   "Gambling among the Issei was quite extensive. Most of the gamblers were the single Japanese farm workers who traveled up and down California working on farms. These workers used to call themselves “blanket katsugi” (blanket carriers)," said Nishizu.  "Frequently they lost all of their earnings to the professional Issei gamblers from Los Angeles, Fresno, Sacramento, and other cities where Japanese farm workers stayed between jobs."

ABOVE: Huntington Beach's Holly Sugar Company, circa 1910.  (Photo, USC Libraries)

Wintersburg and Little Tokyo
   Some of the children of Wintersburg's Issei farmers went on to help develop not only Orange County, but also Little Tokyo.   During his oral history interview, Clarence Nishizu remembered Yasuo Goto, who farmed 180 acres of sugar beets for the Holly Sugar Company.

   "Goto was the father of  Dr. James Goto, M.D., who (maintained) a medical practice on East Second Street in Honda Plaza, part of the Little Tokyo district," recalled Nishizu.  "Dr. Goto has informed me that his father came to the Wintersburg area...and settled right next to Mr. Tsurumatsu Asari, the father of Harley Asari, who operated a goldfish farm on Warner Avenue east of Beach Boulevard..."(Note: this Honda Plaza area is now part of the Sawtelle Japantown district.)

   Goto lived near and most likely knew all three of Wintersburg's goldfish farmers, including T.M. Asari, Charles Mitsuji Furuta and Henry Kiyomi Akiyama. 

   "(Yasuo) Goto first was in the labor camp business. He arranged room and board for many Issei laborers from Japan who worked in Orange County," explained Nishizu to interviewer Arthur A. Hansen.  "From the labor camps, he transported the laborers on wagons pulled by horses, of course, to different farms in the area. This was in about 1910. The next year, 1911, Dr. Jim Goto was born. Later, the senior Goto went into farming California chilies, celery, cabbage, melon, and other vegetables."

   From farming roots, Dr. James Goto, went on to graduate from UCLA and then USC's medical school.  He set up his medical practice--West L.A. Medical-Dental Offices-- on the corner of Sawtelle and Mississippi, the former "Little Osaka", now designated Sawtelle Japantown, as of 2015.

The return of Sei Fujii to Orange County
   Sei Fujii, yet again, comes to the aid of farmers.  The Orange County film premier of Lil Tokyo Reporter will help raise funds for preservation of Historic Wintersburg, the five-acre home and farm of Charles Mitsuji and Yukiko Furuta, and the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission complex.  Screening times are 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 17, and 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 18.  The cast, director and producers will be at every screening.

   The film's cast includes Academy Award® winner Chris Tashima (VISAS AND VIRTUE), Keiko Agena (GILMORE GIRLS), Eijiro Ozaki (LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA), Ikuma Ando (LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA), Sewell Whitney (BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT, CSI-NY), with direction from Jeffrey Chin.  

   More about Lil Tokyo Reporter at http://ltreporter.com/blog/  Advance ticket sales online at http://www.regencymovies.com/movieRunDetail.php?movieRunId=17901&movieId=3432&theaterId=7 

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Lil Tokyo Reporter producers,director and cast---we are grateful for your kindness and interest in our shared history.  Special thanks also to REGENCY THEATRES and to the HUNTINGTON BEACH AUTOMOBILE DEALERS ASSOCIATION, KIM KRAMER and the HUNTINGTON BEACH DOWNTOWN RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION, and SCOTT LAND PHOTOGRAPHY for sponsoring the Lil Tokyo Reporter screenings.  Additional thanks to the HILTON WATERFRONT BEACH RESORT for sponsoring the after-hours reception Saturday, Nov. 17. Thank you for your generosity!

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*The oral histories of Clarence Nishizu, Yukiko Furuta and Henry Kiyomia Akiyama were conducted in 1982 by the Historical and Cultural Foundation of Orange County, the Japanese American Council, and California State University-Fullerton Oral History Program, Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project.

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.