[ad_1]
Isamu Taniguchi was born in Osaka, Japan and immigrated to the United States in 1914 at the age of sixteen, but only returned to Japan to marry Sadayo Miyagi and bring him back to the United States.
Initially unable to own land since state law in California forbids him because of his ancestry, he made a living for his family near Stockton. He spent twenty-two years in the farming business and formed a local farming cooperative called the Brentwood Produce Association, a group that organized the shipping of various crops across California and the east coast.
Photo courtesy Austin History Center PICB-1211
This continued until President Roosevelt issued the executive order authorizing the evacuation and relocation of all those considered a national security threat after the US entered World War II. In March 1942, Isamu was arrested and charged with using the incinerator on his land to send smoke signals to the Japanese and arranging muslin sheets (to protect tomato plants from the spring frost) in the shape of arrows, allegedly indicating military installations. Although not formally charged, he was classified as a dangerous enemy alien and he, his wife and younger son Izumi were taken to the Crystal City Detention Center in South Texas – his older son Alan was at university and was not arrested with the rest of the family .
During his time in Crystal City, Isamu worked as a carpenter and in his spare time he planted and tended gardens. These activities kept him busy but did not distract from the situation. Communication with the outside world was limited as internees were limited to writing two letters and one postcard per week and the censors would read incoming mail and blank out anything related to the war. Even comic books were confiscated out of concerns about encrypted messages.
When the news of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came, many thought it was propaganda as it was thought impossible that Japan had lost the war and while he believed the news, Isamu continued to tend the gardens and its bonsai. “It was like watching the world end,” he later wrote in an essay. “The radiation from atomic bombs from Pika-don. ran out of [the flash and sound of an explosion] over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, shines in every corner of our skull, analyzes right and wrong, flies over our heads with the hum, becomes a whip of God that we can kill immediately, and urges us to act in repentance. “
When they were finally released from Crystal City, Isamu and Sadayo were hoping to start their lives again in California. Unfortunately, there was still a lot of hostility from locals who did not want anyone to live with the “enemy” nearby, and that included Isamu and his family.
So they decided to go to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas instead. Many of the Japanese farmers she met while in custody had settled in the area and invited their families to join them. Finding it much more welcoming than their old California home, Isamu and Sadayo started a large vegetable and cotton farm and stayed there until they retired in 1967 when they moved to Austin to be around their son, Alan, a professor of architecture at the University of Texas.
Photo courtesy Austin History Center PICA-25667
After moving, Isamu expressed a desire to build a Japanese garden dedicated to peace that would be open to visitors and the public, and he hoped Alan would help him find a location. Alan had good connections with the Austin City Parks and Recreation Department, and the director suggested three acres of land to be part of Zilker Park. Isamu worked almost all by himself, with no contract, salary, or written plan to transform this space with intricate walkways, a miniature waterfall, ponds, stone arrangements, and lush flora (one pond even has a lotus it was made from seeds from Japan).
Photo courtesy Austin History Center PICB-13330
Today, the Taniguchi Japanese Garden serves as a permanent symbol of peace and is visited by 100,000 visitors every year. A memorial plaque in the garden’s tea house reads “When a man tries with such pure appreciation in his peaceful mind to compose with stones, grass and water to create a uniform beauty – the formation is called“ garden ”. ‘. . . It was my wish to create a symbol of universal peace by building this visible garden. ”
Isamu Taniguchi died in 1992 after suffering a stroke in 1990 and was buried next to his wife in Austin Memorial Park Cemetery.
[ad_2]
