日系 Nikkei Ancestry

Kanaye Nagaswa may not have founded the winery, but he was the one who made the wine and the winery what it was.  Nagasawa and four other members later purchased the winery from Harris in 1900. Their were lots of Japanese Issei who farmed lots of farms in California, and many of them where in charge of it’s operation and managment, even if their was another landowner during those day’s and even later.

This is a great story, and their are other stories of rice farmers as well, many lost their land when it was confiscated during WWII, and had to fight to get it back or even buy it back.

Does anyone know why Nagasawa changed his name?

Kanaye Nagasawa – DiscoverNikkei.org

The Life of Kanaye Nagasawa Samurai of Kagoshima, Winemaker of Fountaingrove, Santa Rosa, California

February 20, 1852 Birth and Training Hikosuke Isonaga (changed to Kanaye Nagasawa) was born in Kagoshima, Satsuma, Japan. Son of a Samurai, his martial arts training began at 10 years, and he was a skilled warrior by 13. He was a brilliant student with a phenomenal memory.

February 13, 1865 Ordered to England Fifteen students, including Hikosuke, were ordered to go to England by the Daimyo of Satsuma to study Western ways and technology. This was in anticipation of the opening of Japan to westerners when such knowledge would be vital.

February 15, 1865 Awaiting Their Ship The student group went into hiding in Hashima Village. They were fugitives as they were planning to violate the Shogun’s prohibition against going overseas. All assumed new names and anxiously waited two months for their ship.

April 17, 1865 Voyage The ship arrived, and their 65 day voyage began. All arrangements were made by Thomas Berry Glover, a Scot, who was a successful merchant in Nagasaki.

June 21, 1865 Arrival Early in the morning their ship docked at Southampton. In the afternoon they went to London by train and were amazed at the splendid sights.

August 19, 1865 Sent to Scotland At thirteen, Nagasawa was too young to enter the University with the other students. He was sent to Aberdeen, Scotland, to live with the parents of Thomas Glover. There he entered secondary school, and records show that he was a top student.

Summer 1867 Funds Decreased In anticipation of the overthrow of the Shogunate, Satsuma increased its armament expenditures. Funds for the students decreased, and their economic situation was tenuous. All but six returned to Kagoshima.

August 1867 Thomas Lake Harris The students met Thomas Lake Harris, leader of the Brotherhood of the New Life cult in the USA. He offered them continued education in exchange for labor in his New York colony. Nagasawa and his fellow students accepted and crossed the Atlantic with Harris.

October 14, 1867 Meiji Restoration Secret orders were given by the Emperor to the Daimyo of Satsuma and Choshu to overthrow the Shogunate. The Meiji Restoration began. Emperor Meiji ascended the throne in 1868 and ruled until his death in 1912.

1867 – 1875 Brockton, New York Harris took the students to the Brotherhood’s colony in Brocton. The vineyards were a classroom for young Nagasawa, and he learned viticulture from an expert. In 1868 all but Nagasawa returned to Kagoshima for patriotic reasons.

July 1875 Fountaingrove Harris, Nagasawa and three others arrived in Santa Rosa seeking a new site for the colony. Four hundred acres north of Santa Rosa were purchased for $50 an acre. Construction began immediately on the Fountaingrove Ranch buildings. Later more acreage was added. [read more]

日系 Nikkei T-Shirt by okawastudios

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Arizona’s new law targeting immigrants, and now their law targeting Ethnic studies alleging that it’s teaching the kids to hate is to me racist.

They get the laws on the books because the northern European settlers think their are to many Mexican’s in Arizona, and these people don’t realize Arizona was Mexican Territory not to long ago. Why wouldn’t their be a lot of Mexican’s in these parts? Their dumbfounded because they think America is a northern European country set up for them [ see kkk ]. It might appear that way if they stay in their own little community from days on end, and not venture out to learn something new, maybe they need to take an Ethnic studies course instead of learning nothing but European studies.

BTW, if Arizona plans on banning Ethnic studies related to Mexican-American, Native-American or Asian-American for that matter, then they should ban the European studies courses as well.  That most certainly would leave everyone ignorant of the facts, and then the KKK might be able to gain advances in their membership because more and more senators would be uneducated on facts and create bills like these that target Mexican American and Native American people in favor of northern European settlers.

People have a right to know their history, history of their ancestry and where it was they came from, and I mean all people, not just the northern European-American’s, and they have a right know how the country came about. You just can’t leave out facts that California, Arizona, New Mexico and other states not to long ago where Mexican Territory. It’s history, and all people should be able to embrace it, it’s not teaching people to hate, it’s teaching the facts about history. History, both good and the bad of it should be told, so that the mistakes that happened then do not happen again.

What’s next? Will California follow Arizona and ban the teachings that take place on how Japanese-American’s where removed from their homes and taken to concentration camps? Will this happen again, and again because people don’t know that it was wrong, if they ban these types of historical teachings? If these histories are not taught then who will fight to keep them from happening again?

I saw a news segment from a Arizona news station, and there was this, what appeared to be a northern European American guy belittling some Asian people because they didn’t speak English with out their Asian accent. Interesting since their are a lot of American’s who speak English with their strong northern European accents, but no body say’s anything about them. They every one else, yet they adopt everything that is theirs, even the American English language is filled with foreign adopted words. People have a right to speak other languages, and why not? We are living in a global society, and it was these same types of people who pushed for it, so they could sell their goods to other countries, yet they don’t want these same people here visiting or working. How can America have a closed off society, when it was the American’s who forced Japan to open theirs and forced them to change, not to long ago? All this looks very hypocritical!

Many northern Europeans don’t want to do work that the Mexican’s who come here to work do. I remember my father telling me he couldn’t hire white people because they didn’t want to do the work, so he was left with hiring Mexican’s who wanted to work, and this was more than 30 years ago.

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The annual National Cherry Blossom Festival is taking place in the U.S. capital of Washington, D.C., from March 27th to April 11th.

毎年恒例のナショナル・チェリーブロッサム・フェスティバルが3月27日から4月11日まで、米国の首都ワシントンD.C.で開催中です。

Show off a fashionable Cherry Blossom Keds Shoe 流行靴  桜祭りのスニーカー

Bloom Watch

The blooming of the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. has come to symbolize the natural beauty of our nation’s capital city. The famous trees, a gift from Japan in 1912, signal Washington’s rite of spring with an explosion of life and color that surrounds the Tidal Basin in a sea of pale pink and white blossoms. Thousands of city residents and visitors from across the nation and around the world come here to witness the spectacle, hoping that the trees will be at the peak of bloom for the Cherry Blossom Festival. [more info]

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Cultural News: Lecture: True story of the first Japanese colony, Jan 19

January 19, 2010 (Tuesday) 6:30 PM

Brian Tadashi Maeda, film director, will be speaking about his current film project: “Samurai of Gold Hill”

It is the fascinating sage of the “Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony,” first Japanese colony to establish itself in California.

The last samurai group of Aizu-Wakamatsu during the Bakumatsu (the End of Tokugawa Shogunate) period, escaped from Japan with a lead of a German to settling in Gold Hill, California.

The year was 1869, the second year of the Meiji when they finally arrived at California. [more information]

More information about Wakamatsu Colony at Rafu Shimpo: A Legend Reborn By Ryoko Ohnishi

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Getting a lot of spam bots or spammers trying to register at the forum.

I delete a lot of them, and sometimes I may inadvertently delete a legitimate registration, so please retry if that is you. That can be avoided if you use a good name and a good email address, a lot of the spammers use hotmail, gmail and yahoo because they are so anonymous. I get around the spammer by checking the IP address to see if they are problem IPs.

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I’m appalled this has happened!

We have U.S. Soldiers fighting a war against alleged “terrorists,” yet they’re here in our own back yard, and have been here for a long time.  The Department of Homeland Security, DHS, needs to do more to protect all American’s within the U.S. and monitor these right wing terrorist groups, so that this doesn’t happen again.

The constitution should be enough to protect all citizens against this hate, so please defend our constitutions from those who wish to change it.

Japanese American Citizens League Website
Members of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) are dismayed and appalled at the shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Museum which resulted in the death of a courageous museum security guard.

[Click here for the pdf; JACL response]

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