Leap of faith : how Enmanji Temple was saved

a few years ago I moved from san Francisco to Sonoma County to live with my partner As a person of Japanese and Taiwanese ancestry, I was comfortable in a city where 30% of the population was Asian. The new home was just 50 miles north, but I

felt a little isolated in a place where the census shows only 3% Asian population. One day while on a weekend excursion to the nearby Sebastopol, we drove past the japanese buddhist temple. I found out that this old temple, an important center of the japanese american community

in the area was still standing today, probably because of the actions that a few young people took a long time ago. Sonoma County a fertile land and a home to once thriving indigenous tribes was also an attractive destination for european settlers and immigrants from all over

the world. My search for the story about the Manti temple led me to longtime residents, my great grandparents, my grandparents, my parents and myself have always lived in Sonoma County. My grandparents on my mother's side of the family were sheep and chicken ranchers. My grandparents on

my dad's side of the family or barry growers. When sebastopol was very much a very area. Barbara's good friends. Sarah and Jack both had passed away by the time this film was shot, the three used to go to sunday school together. Sarah and Jack's daughter Paula

describes their story. My dad grew up here and took care of the chickens and the ranch and also worked at the cannery. So he was a farm boy. My mom and dad since they could only do church things, they did every event that ever came along

that they could possibly do because that's the only way they were allowed to really date because my mom was so young. Many Japanese immigrants came to Sonoma County at the turn of the 20th century Marie and her family were longtime members of the Amun Ji Temple.

I was born and raised in Sebastopol Sonoma county at this ranch, the lynch ranch that my father who came from Yamaguchi in Japan had rented because at that time we could not own property in the summertime they were working the apples, they would harvest apples and

the dryers and then in the winter time uh they used to train the hops and so my father, our whole family used to do that and in those days all the kids used to go out and help also. My father came to this country when he

was 16, worked up in the railroad for one year and then came back down then he opened the grocery store and he married my mother who was very, very young at 14 I guess I was the oldest of six Children other than that there was a

buddhist temple and then the japanese american citizens League, you know became active too. And so we all became members of everything at first they had a hall in Sebastopol and that's where the japanese congregated when they had japanese movies come in or they had any kind

of Wedding or any kind of gathering social gathering during the 20s and 30s, the Japanese farming community in Sonoma County grew. In the early 30s, an unexpected opportunity came up. The imperial Japanese Manchurian railroad Company wanted to donate the building they used as part of their

exhibit hall at the Chicago World's Fair to the buddhist churches of America, which in turn offered it to the members of the Sonoma County buddhist community. The building faithfully represents 1/12 century comma cuda architecture built without a single nail and when the air was over and

they had to tear it down, it was quite a big thing for us. Then they had to go out and make gathered $30,000 of donations, which they had struggled hard time doing, but they did get it. But once they got it together and was able to

bring the temple over, it was a tremendous feat. They didn't do it overnight, you know, they did during one year's time, people go out and work and all that. So it's quite a big job when they had a parade from downtown. So basketball and the people

marched all the way down from there to the grounds here to have a celebration and so if you see the picture that they took of that event. I mean there were just literally, I don't know, four or 500 people at least standing around the building. I

didn't know there were that many people around. But anyway it was, it was quite an event I guess at that time, even as the japanese community became more established in this country, they were not treated as equals to their european counterparts. For example, the alien land

law effectively prevented asian immigrants from buying land. But some families like the food do shows who owned their orchards, circumvented this discriminatory law by purchasing land in the name of their american born Children. In fact, my uncle actually work for the pharaoh shows before he was

old enough to have his own business. They were coworkers, neighbors, close friends went to meetings to talk about the apple industry together share ideas and um, I think it was, was a unique area to be a being at that time and it was small, it was

a small community, This was a time when separate but equal doctrine prevailed in America In the 30s and in the 40s while the Japanese community would be pretty much uh stay by themselves and have social events, you know by themselves. While many schools, even in places

like san Francisco was still segregated, I was surprised to learn that out here in the country, asian latino native american black and white Children went to schools together and sometimes even play together, this is Margaret and this is me Margaret and I Margaret, Mazoka and I

started grammar school together and playing games together at school, the old hopscotch and jump rope and all those games that we played as kids while Barbara and Margaret's friendship grew. War was spreading in the pacific, culminating in Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7,

1941. This event signaled an abrupt disruption of people's lives in the community. When the war broke out. Lady in came down and told me to go home. My mother called and went, I went home, my dad was gone, the FBI had come in and so when

the FBI came in they took ah my dad, I remember with Margaret because I was over at her house and we were out in the orchard and a car drove up but he got out and asked her where her father was and she said he was

in the other end of the orchard and they went back and literally put him in the car and took him away. There are some people like George ham mo's father that were taken away the leaders and Mr Cobb okay. And uh ah Mr Otani. So there

were some of those that they took away that were the leaders of the church basically and had big farms, people, you know in the community said that rocks were thrown at their cars and everything because they were Japs and then in May was when we got

the order that we had to evacuate and we had to leave and we had approximately two weeks people sold their positions if they could and arrange for their neighbors to care for their farms, homes and businesses in Manti Temple, like other places of worship that belonged

to the Japanese americans was locked up during the war years. They didn't tell us where we were going to go, they just put us on a train and then they had everybody keep their shades down. Margaret did not show up and I immediately asked mr whole

this art teacher if I could go to the phone and call her house and he said yes, that would be okay. So I went down to the office and called her house and no one answered. So I knew perfectly well in my mind that she and

her family had been taken away and I I just I was at a loss and actually went up to Margaret's house and knocked on the door and looked all over and looked in and I could see everything was pretty much intact but they were gone. You

know, we were young kids, we didn't know what was going on. We knew a horrible thing had occurred and you know, there was a lot of a lot of hate, a lot of bad things being said about a lot of Japanese people and And all that

we knew was that the Japanese Americans that we knew were very nice people and you know, it was hard for us to understand as kids. We all we knew is we wanted, we wanted them back, we want our friends back, there were over 100,000 people of

Japanese descent who were sent into concentration camps, 70% of them were born, born and raised in the United States and we're american citizens. The people from Sonoma County were sent first to the Merced Assembly center and then were sent three months later to um aqui colorado

as the war escalated. So did the anti japanese sentiment. There were several attempts to vandalize or burn down the temple in the youth group that my parents both belong to. They heard that there was arson at the buddhist temple. And so they organized youth to go

down and work in two hour shifts as many nights as their parents would let them out and weekends and um stood vigil, Some people say that it was the pastor of the congregational church who inspired a youth group to guard the temple. I can remember their

names, there was bob martz, Clayton Hoffman Bruce Mackenzie Sarah and Jack and myself, we were a small group and forming a circle as far as we could reach, which wasn't very far and but forming a circle, symbolic circle around the temple. Um, and dedicating ourselves to

protecting it. Well since we were a small group, we couldn't protect it 24 hours a day every day and I don't know that we prevented it from being burned down because there were a lot of times when we weren't here, but the fact is it didn't

get burned down. So we felt successful and like we had done what we set out to do. We felt very strongly that our Japanese friends were our friends just because they were our friends. So we didn't want something that was that important in their lives and

that special to them to get destroyed during the war. Barbara wrote letters to her friend Margaret Masuoka who was incarcerated with her family in a Maki colorado. Today, Barbara and Margaret are still friends. Eventually when the war ended, the Japanese american families were released from the

camps all but a couple of families from the area returned home to Sonoma County. This was unusual because in other parts of the country, many Japanese american families did not return. We script all the thin uh sheetrock often underneath. You can see the burnt parts of

the building out there and the holes in the wall and things like that and and where our organ is today, right behind there. I remember seeing these um, Oh I don't know, 50, 60 holes that were poked in behind the, where the organ is today and

then where the carpet runner is right in here. Then when we had that removed then I can still see the damages of the fire in there, you can see the burnt spots on the floor there, we left in one corner there, the damage of where the

window was broken and somebody threw in a fire bomb or something inside through the glass. And so if you look at part of it that when we did remodel it, that we left the burnt spot there as a reminder of what happened in the past. I

felt like, hey, you know what, that was really that the community support and that was really great and it was, I think it's a story that needs to be told and I try to tell students when I go to different schools that you do, you can

make a difference and that these students didn't make a difference. They probably saved the church from being burned down and dissipate. It was through their efforts that the probably the center of the Japanese american community is still there. I learned that in Sonoma County there were

many stories of friendship and support neighbors looked after Japanese family farms and properties. When the japanese Children returned from the camps, there, caucasian friends walked with them to schools to make sure they're not harassed on the way and how do you eat them? You want to

eat it with your hands. This story of young people taking a leap of faith to help members of their community does not erase the reality that civil rights were violated, properties stolen and families torn apart. Instead it reminds us that it is possible to stand by

those who are endangered and victimized by the prevailing political climate. It wasn't easy to find out what really happened because so many years had passed. But I found myself inspired by this story as I seek to make Sonoma County my home. I got an invite. If

she don't come back, I think I'm gonna lose my mind, but if she ever comes back to stay, it's gonna be another brand new walking with my baby down by the san Francisco.