Joy Wallace Dickinson can be reached at, , or by good old-fashioned letter to Florida Flashback, c/o Dickinson, P.O. In addition to Kawai’s book, information about Florida’s Yamato Colony is available on the websites of the Morikami Museum ( ) and the Boca Raton Historical Society ( ), much of it written by John Thomas “Tom” Gregersen, former cultural director at the Morikami Museum who translated the book into English, along with co-translator Reiko Nishioka, former director of education at the Morikami. Since its opening in 1977, the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach has been a center for Japanese arts and culture in South Florida. None were interned, but two families were removed from their homes in Yamato, and three settlers, including George Morikami (1886-1976), who would be the last, had bank accounts frozen and their movements restricted for a time, as is noted at .Īfter World War II, Morikami continued to farm in Delray Beach until the 1970s, when he donated his farmland to Palm Beach County to preserve as a park and to honor the Yamato Colony’s legacy. Army sought a location for an Army-Air Corps training base. Yamato residents lost their land in 1942 when the U.S. Although the colony they made vanished long ago, its lone survivor left a lasting legacy by donating the land that would become the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach.Īt its peak, the colony numbered only a few families and finally ended during World War II - not a good time to be Japanese in the United States. It’s a story of Japanese settlers who ventured across the globe at the dawn of the 20th century to the wilds of Florida. Years later, Kawai would tell that little-known story in a book, “Yamato Colony: The Pioneers Who Brought Japan to Florida,” published in English in 2020 by the University Press of Florida. His goal was to seek out “grass-roots America.” But here, in Florida, he saw the ancient name for Japan itself: Yamato. He was interning in Daytona Beach and had chosen Florida especially because he wanted to learn about the United States in a place with no connection to Japan. Most highway signs meant little to Kawai. In 1986, a Japanese journalism intern named Ryusuke Kawai found himself breezing south on Interstate 95 in an old Volkswagen Beetle when a sign for a Boca Raton off-ramp caught his eye: Yamato Road, it read.
0 kommentar(er)
