San Gabriel Nursery & Florist celebrates 100 years
In search of new alternatives, Fred Yoshimura left his house in Yamaguchi, Japan, for California in 1917. There was no household to greet him when he arrived. He was 21.
After a false begin as a rice farmer in San Francisco, he discovered his option to Southern California, the place he made a dwelling as a landscaper, honing his expertise as a gardener and sustaining sprawling lawns throughout the San Gabriel Valley.
Whereas working in South Pasadena, he met Mitoko Naito, a maid from Hiroshima. The 2 first-generation immigrants — identified within the Japanese diaspora as issei — ultimately married.
By then Yoshimura had saved sufficient cash to lease a parcel of land that he used to open Mission Nursery in 1923. It could blossom into a significant industrial success now often known as San Gabriel Nursery & Florist, which this yr is celebrating its a hundredth anniversary.
But it surely didn’t come simply.
The Yoshimura household labored laborious at their enterprise however briefly misplaced it throughout World Battle II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt licensed the compelled relocation and incarceration of 120,000 folks of Japanese descent — two-thirds of them residents — in February 1942 after the assault on Pearl Harbor. Their story is a testomony to their dedication to beat all obstacles, together with rampant racism and social injustice, in hopes of constructing a greater life.
Immediately, on the entrance to the flower store, a crimson anthurium plant sits subsequent to a household shrine, which incorporates a big {photograph} of Fred and Mitoko Yoshimura hanging on the wall.
“I can nonetheless hear their voices,” their granddaughter Mary Ishihara Swanton, 55, mentioned. “They by no means depart you. They’re all the time there.”
As Swanton makes her manner via the household’s two-acre nursery, she calls her 88-year-old father, Saburo Ishihara, who nonetheless works 5 days every week on the household enterprise and who not too long ago had cataract surgical procedure.
A lot of Swanton’s family who watched the nursery develop through the years are actually gone. Her aunt Margie Yoshihashi died at 92 in January, only a few days after the beginning of the brand new yr.
“It was her aim for the corporate to make it to the a hundredth anniversary,” Swanton mentioned. “That was her dream.”
For years, Yoshihashi greeted clients and oversaw the flower store. And he or she continued to name Ishihara after she retired to remind him to show off the espresso maker on the finish of the day.
A portrait of Fred and Mitoko Yoshimura hangs at San Gabriel Nursery & Florist, which is celebrating 100 years in enterprise this yr.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Instances)
The household’s legacy started with cuttings, the pruned clippings of vegetation that Fred Yoshimura gathered whereas he labored as a landscaper.
Swanton’s grandmother didn’t know a lot about gardening, however she did her greatest to plant the clippings on the household’s new nursery. Over time, their enterprise grew azaleas, camellias, bonsai and different hard-to-find vegetation the Yoshimura household launched to the California horticulture scene.
By the Nineteen Thirties, the household had solidified their repute as pillars of the neighborhood, Swanton mentioned, as her grandfather labored to foster a greater understanding of Japanese and American cultures.
The Yoshimuras had 4 youngsters: Hayao, Raymond, Florence and Margie, who had been second-generation Japanese Individuals or nisei.
Their enterprise flourished they usually discovered help from the neighborhood regardless of anti-Asian discrimination that was pervasive all through the nation.
In 1913, California handed the Alien Land Regulation, which barred Asian immigrants from proudly owning agricultural land. The legislation was spurred by fears that immigrant entrepreneurs would take over the farming trade, USC historical past lecturer Susan Kamei mentioned.
“By the Forties, Japanese American farmers had been producing 40% of California’s industrial vegetable crops,” Kamei mentioned.
Tensions boiled over after Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor, launching the U.S. into World Battle II. The day after the assault, Fred Yoshimura was picked up by federal brokers, interrogated and detained for a number of months, Swanton mentioned.
A buyer pauses in entrance of a banner celebrating 100 years of enterprise for San Gabriel Nursery & Florist.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Instances)
Within the throes of wartime hysteria, it was no shock then that Japanese Individuals had been focused by the federal government, Kamei mentioned.
“Within the occasion of the anticipated struggle with Japan, [the U.S. government] knew precisely the place these folks had been and instantly discovered all of the houses of Japanese Individuals, together with my dad’s household, after which arrested people who they thought of to be neighborhood leaders,” Kamei mentioned.
Whereas Fred Yoshimura was lacking, Mituko Yoshimura continued to run the nursery, however the U.S. authorities notified her the household can be relocated to a wartime jail camp, Swanton mentioned.
“It was essentially the most tough time in her life, and my grandmother was principally doing all of it by herself,” Swanton mentioned. “My aunt or my grandmother didn’t actually speak about their time within the camps. I assumed as a child that camp was like summer time camp. It wasn’t till I used to be older that I noticed what they went via.”
Mitoko Yoshimura scrambled to settle the household’s loans and determine what to do with the enterprise. A number of males confirmed up on the nursery and aggressively made low gives to purchase the enterprise, Swanton mentioned, however her grandmother refused.
She obtained one other supply from E. Manchester Boddy, the writer of the Los Angeles Each day Information, who agreed to purchase the enterprise, the remaining inventory and the lease on the property, Swanton mentioned. He agreed to pay the household in installments. Boddy would later relocate the nursery’s inventory to his property in La Cañada Flintridge, which grew to become in the present day’s Descanso Gardens.
The Yoshimura household was ultimately relocated to a jail camp on an Indian reservation in Gila River, Ariz.
Swanton is aware of the household enterprise ended on April 8, 1942, as a result of the enterprise ledger abruptly stopped on that date. Whereas the household was incarcerated, Swanton’s uncle Hayao was drafted to serve within the U.S. Military.
Later that summer time, the household was reunited with Fred Yoshimura.
Whereas incarcerated, Mitoko Yoshimura was paid by the federal authorities to run the camp’s flower store, and she or he organized a bouquet that was offered to Eleanor Roosevelt throughout her go to to the camp. Swanton’s household continued to attend faculty whereas on the camp and posed for college portraits in yearbooks.
The trauma of the camps was seldom mentioned among the many household. Todd Swanton, Mary Ishihara Swanton’s husband, remembers how later in life Ichiro Yoshihashi, her uncle by marriage, would develop impatient with individuals who complained concerning the expertise.
That mentality is widespread in the Japanese tradition, Kamei mentioned.
Fred and Mitoko Yoshimura pose with their youngsters, Florence, Hayao, Raymond and Margie, in an undated photograph.
(Mary Ishihara Swanton)
“Kodomo no tame ni, or for the sake of our youngsters. It’s about not desirous to burden our youngsters or our descendants with our trials and challenges,” Kamei mentioned.
After the struggle resulted in 1945, the camps had been disbanded and the Yoshimuras had been allowed to return house. However their enterprise was gone they usually had been compelled to begin over. A household buddy, Gene Perez, watched over the household’s belongings whereas they had been gone. Many different folks locally who had been hostile to the household firstly of the struggle instantly grew to become heat to the Yoshimuras, Swanton mentioned.
It took years for the nursery to rebuild its inventory of flowers, bushes and vegetation. Fred Yoshimura and his sons once more began to construct up their clippings from landscaping. He additionally planted pansies, Swanton mentioned, which grew quick and rapidly helped usher in some cash.
The household needed to rename the enterprise San Gabriel Nursery & Florist. The brand new nursery was constructed throughout the road from the outdated enterprise.
Different Japanese residents who had been incarcerated in the course of the struggle had been provided a spot to remain and for a time tents had been arrange on the nursery, Swanton mentioned.
A employee inspects flowers at San Gabriel Nursery & Florist.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Instances)
Whereas the household was within the camps, Raymond Yoshimura befriended Ichiro Yoshihashi, and the 2 would go on to earn their horticulture levels from Ohio State. Finally they might work collectively at the household nursery and develop the enterprise, putting in greenhouses and sustaining a wholesale retailer.
Raymond Yoshimura would go on to hybridize a number of vegetation, together with the Mission Bell azalea that grew to become a well-liked draw for the nursery, Swanton mentioned.
By 1957, the nursery had begun to host international trade college students from Japan. That was when Saburo Ishihara, Swanton’s father, first arrived in California.
He had attended horticulture faculty in Tokyo, spoke English and was fascinated with American tradition, all traits that impressed Fred Yoshimura. He instantly put Ishihara to work within the flower store.
“On the primary day, he picked me and informed me to remain right here,” Ishihara mentioned, pointing to the ground contained in the store.
Ishihara stayed for one yr and went again to Japan, however he returned to San Gabriel to marry Florence Yoshimura. Ichiro Yoshihashi married Margie Yoshimura, Swanton’s aunt.
A buyer admires orchids in a greenhouse at San Gabriel Nursery & Florist.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Instances)
Shortly after Swanton was born, the retail store was set on fireplace by an arsonist. Lots of the household information, which had been already scattered because of the time within the camps, had been destroyed, Swanton mentioned.
Although the fireplace destroyed the storefront, the household managed to renew their enterprise inside just a few days, and inside a yr the brand new retailer was constructed.
Florence Yoshimura died when Swanton was a baby. Her aunt and father raised her.
At her aunt’s funeral this yr, folks remembered Yoshihashi as an individual who might meet any problem. Regardless of the incarceration of relations, the fireplace and all the opposite setbacks they confronted, Swanton mentioned, the nursery survived.
“No matter my grandma needed to cope with is manner worse than what I’ve to cope with,” Swanton mentioned.
During the last 25 years, Swanton has run the enterprise collectively along with her father, husband and different staff. There are reminders all over the place of the previous and those that got here earlier than them.
Subsequent to the nursery is a car parking zone, she factors out, the place her grandparents’ little yellow home as soon as stood, the household’s historical past without end linked with the household enterprise.
