Furusato: Terminal Island, BHCA

Furusato ("homeland"), a powerful, nostalgic term from the 1930s - like patrie, heimat in France & Germany - gives a sense of belonging, tying culture to place and was dangerously identified with race. It is also the name of a video documentary about the pre-war Japanese community on Terminal Island in San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles.

A thriving ghetto of canneries, abalone fishermen, schools, churches, the island posed an economic threat to competitors who were all too glad the community ended with the internment order in 1941, following Pearl Harbor. 

Almost all physical traces gone - buildings razed - the living survivors rallied to establish a memorial whose 10 year anniversary we attended.

My father was born on the island, returning to the village of Tanami, Japan when 3, until 17, when he returned Stateside to attend Redondo Beach High.  Like Sicily's dominant showing of Italians to New York, Wakayama Prefecture represented 40% of the island, their dialect prevailing.

I am attached to the idea of Tanami, whose immigrants  crisscrossed SoCal for annual picnics, carnivals, and company dinners; a tie I never understood until  the death of my father, when our living room filled with persons dressed in black. All the weathered faces I suddenly recognized as  "villagers," who had come to mourn one of their own.

After the ceremony, we cross the Vincent Thomas Bridge to Long Beach to visit my cousin's family in Seal Beach. Patty, another cousin, dropped in and we had a rare afternoon of reconnecting, swapping stories.  Turns out another Tanami figure - Jim Yabe - who'd lived down our street in Gardena, became prominent in the martial arts world of karate & kendo (swordfighting) and gave Luke Skywalker lessons on using the lightsaber!

 

+++

Elle & Carolyn hanging an origami mobile for

Parent's Night at Beacon Hill. Carolyn is teaching art in Elle's homeroom class.

  The hobby of my childhood has turned into an international phenomenon and, for some, a key to the mathematical structure of the world, explored in the film, Between the Folds.

Beauty, art, and mathematics - the formal nature of aesthetic principles - is readily demonstrated in David Stephanson's study of gothic cathedrals, Heavenly Vaults:Contrasting with modern notions of art as equated with expressivity - or even therapy - the premodern held it as pattern to be discovered, explored, exalted; the mind of God, if you will.  A structure you encountered rather than an emotion to be channeled, this would seem opposite to contemporary notions of worship & art - the affirmation of the everyday world of the self - so popular these days.

In my dreams, the children & parents of Beacon Hill will be able to enter these spaces, connecting their learning with actual geography and architectural space. 

These Camarillo children, along with church, comprise Michael & Jack's community - an intentional one we cobble together more-or-less bereft of natural family ties; admittedly, a project we engage in, as well.