Activists seek to secure Japanese immigrants’ ‘sacred’ land

HUNTINGTON Seashore, Calif. (RNS) — The words and phrases “Jesus Lives” are emblazoned across a dilapidated unoccupied construction on the hectic intersection of Warner Avenue and Nichols Lane in this Orange County city south of Los Angeles.

The building’s home windows are boarded up. Different shades of white and unmatched paint cover graffiti and emphasize cracks in the property’s exterior.

This is the historic Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church that sits on a 4.5-acre landscape that, according to the Nationwide Trust for Historic Preservation, is among the the only surviving Japanese American properties obtained just before California enacted the Alien Land Legislation in 1913 that barred Asian immigrants from proudly owning land.

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The 1st acknowledged Japanese immigrants arrived in Orange County in 1900, and just four many years later, religious leaders — Episcopalians, Buddhists, Presbyterians, and Methodists between them — founded the Wintersburg Japanese Mission, the Countrywide Trust stated. Charles Furuta and the Rev. Barnabus Hisayoshi Terasawa acquired the land in 1908, and the authentic structures went up in 1910. The mission was formally regarded as a church by the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. in 1930. A bigger church for the increasing congregation was designed in 1934.

Regional advocates and historians have for decades sought to protect the historic property — now owned by Republic Expert services, a squander administration company — that quite a few refer to as a sacred spot. In the earlier there have been attempts to create the internet site as a self-storage facility.

And in latest months, the general public has reignited their efforts to safeguard this piece of land immediately after a Feb. 25 fireplace destroyed two of the 6 properties on the house, which include a 112-12 months-old parsonage and the 1910 Wintersburg Japanese Mission, which was demolished a handful of several hours soon after the fireplace, in accordance to regional historian Mary Adams Urashima. The Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church, designed in 1934, stays intact.

Police mentioned they “have no rationale to believe” the hearth was intentionally established.

On March 19 Asian American companies held a rally exterior Historic Wintersburg to demand from customers an independent investigation into the fireplace, chanting, “Don’t trash our record, we should have the truth of the matter!” Some held indicators declaring, “Save the church Help save our heritage!”

“It established everyone into stress mode, for the reason that there actually was a decline,” claimed Jamie Hiber, govt director of the Heritage Museum of Orange County, of the hearth. “It authorized a platform for this to at the time once more come to the forefront.”

Urashima, who has published thoroughly about the heritage of Wintersburg, mentioned she extensive feared the property would catch fireplace and said the buildings’ decline was “demolition by neglect.” Weeds and brush posed a fireplace threat, and vandalism had degraded the issue of the buildings. Urashima and other folks hope Heritage Museum of Orange County could sooner or later get the land for a park and museum the general public can delight in.

Neither Republic Solutions nor the town of Huntington Beach returned a request for comment, but interim Town Manager Sean Joyce told the Los Angeles Occasions recently that he had “held exploratory discussions with Republic regarding the standing of the home, such as a achievable order by the city.”

The assets encapsulates 3 generations of Japanese Americans’ religion and general public lifetime. Urashima stated Japanese immigrants took English language classes and mentioned monetary organizing, even as they continued Japanese traditions this sort of as celebrating the emperor’s birthday. It’s also where Furuta turned the first Japanese person baptized as Christian in Orange County, she mentioned.

To Urashima, this place is “consecrated floor and a religious put for so lots of.”

“I feel that can make the floor sacred,” she added.

Urashima explained the assets could present Individuals the opportunity to discover about Japanese American lifetime past the Entire world War II-period internment camps and see that Japanese American record is not “one dimensional.”

“When you take out these factors from the landscape that convey to other views, other chapters of American background, people lose that connection, and they do not normally take into consideration them aspect of American history,” Urashima reported. “It fades absent.”

The Wintersburg group was incarcerated through Entire world War II, and Furuta was taken to the Tuna Canyon Detention Center in Los Angeles. Households returned following the war. The church, which experienced been shuttered, reopened and continued to improve right until it moved to close by Santa Ana, exactly where it continues to be a predominantly Japanese American congregation.

To Nancy Kyoko Oda, president of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition, “it would be a tragedy to lose some thing like this.”

Her coalition is effective to raise recognition about the heritage of the station, which held Japanese Us residents the U.S. authorities regarded as “enemy aliens” during the war. The station internet site has been turned into a golf course.

“There’s a declaring, ‘Out of sight, out of brain,’” Oda mentioned. “People often really don’t want to identify this excellent reduction of human liberty … They consider absent your church. They take absent your home, your enterprise, all the things that you have.”

The Historic Wintersburg home is considered one particular of “America’s Most Endangered Historic Places” and in 2015 was designated a “National Treasure” by the National Have confidence in for Historic Preservation.

Hiber explained the Heritage Museum of Orange County has a eyesight for the place as a museum and a vacation spot for nearby learners for lectures.

“Even following the fireplace, it’s a non secular spot. It’s presently a desired destination of pilgrimage for not just Japanese Us residents, but the Japanese folks in basic,” Hiber mentioned.

“The family members came again following (internment) to occupy that area and produced it into a little something new and relevant to their expertise just after the war and coming back from the internment camp,” she explained. “Just strolling the perimeter … you really feel it you experience the heritage.”

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