 Okay. Before I introduce our esteemed speaker, I would like to go through our land acknowledgement, understanding that many of the folks here do the work of reconciliation with our indigenous partners, do the work of trying to figure out how can we work towards a situation of trust and accountability with Native Californians, with Native North Americans, with our partners in South Africa elsewhere. We do the work, and so taking away one of our resources to do that work is anathema to what this university supposedly is about. So just thinking about, through this land acknowledgement, not just the words, but the deeds and the actual labor of doing the work is happening here at Don't Hamstring Us. The Archaeological Research Facility is located in Puychen. The ancestral and unceded territory of Trochano-speaking Ohlone people, successors of the historic and sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. We acknowledge that this land remains of great importance to the Ohlone people, and that the ARF community, we inherit a history of archaeological scholarship that has disturbed Ohlone ancestors and made attempts to erase living Ohlone people from the present and future of this land. It is therefore our collective responsibility to critically transform our archaeological inheritance and practice what we do in support of Ohlone sovereignty and to hold the University of California accountable to the needs of all Native and Indigenous peoples. So today, coming all the way up from the Redwoods of Santa Cruz, we have Jacob Stone, who's going to be talking about the Reven here at Harifamstead, which I think was first kind of explored by Rob Edwards, right, in the Castile Field School back in like the late 90s. Great stories. I can't wait to hear Jacob as a PhD candidate under the tutelage of subformer Berkeley products and the Department of Ethnology at the University of California Santa Cruz. As an historical archaeologist, his dissertation research focuses on the incarceration of Japanese Americans on the west coast of the United States during World War II. Major themes explored in his work include intermittent archaeology in varying contexts, the Asian diaspora, and the experiences of Japanese civilians as they moved across the globe and into the U.S., as well as how community, place, and material culture get enliven us, enlighten us, sorry, to the experiences of many who are held in incarceration centers. Jacob believes his research impacts the large breadth of detainees, refugees, and all displaced persons across the globe today, who may similarly be forming communities and persevering during these disruptive circumstances. He's also spent eight years in the CRM field, which encourages a critical look at how archaeologists manage, carry, and archive artifact collections. Thus, his research explores how archaeologists can give back to the communities and present orphaned collections in a way that is informative, but also respectful and beneficial for all parties involved. Please join me in welcoming Jacob to the ARF. What is the sound? Well, thank you so much for that introduction. My name is Jacob Stone and, like I mentioned, I'm from UCSC. I'm a fifth-year graduate student there. And today I'm just going to be talking a little bit about my dissertation project. This one is what? I mostly work on there at school. So to get right into it, I'd like to start with sort of outlining some of my main goals for the project, some of the main questions I'm trying to answer actually in that intro. It was so comprehensive. We talked a little bit about some of these things. But again, trying to look specifically at a post-war journey of Japanese-American incarceraries is really the main focus of this project, as I feel the Hirahara House has a really unique sort of opportunity to look at that timeframe compared to a lot of other Japanese-American sites around here. Also to showcase the story of the Redmond-Hirahara House in general and its legacy as part of the Watsonville community. And then, like mentioned, also sort of handling orphaned collections and archival materials in general. So this was not a collection that I came into Santa Cruz having or thinking I was going to be working with. I actually started doing slavery plantations in Haiti. But this was an orphan collection that came to us at UCSC. And I've really had a great time sort of thinking through how myself as historical archaeologists and others can use these materials to sort of share new perspectives on the collection. And so just a couple main questions here then really generally, how did incarceration affect the lives of Japanese-Americans during an after World War II? How did this impact the community of Watsonville? And naturally being in archaeological dissertation, right? What material evidence is there for this transformation of consumer practices or ethnic representation within these contexts and communities? And you'll have to bear with me for 15 minutes or so here. I decided to start with a lot of background, a lot of ethnographic research. So we'll just we'll get into the house a little bit later. I just wanted to give us sort of set the scene here and let us know where we're talking about and sort of the history of the area. And so primarily I'm focused in the Northern California Monterey Bay region. So Watsonville is where the house is located, but this project has led me to other really prominent Japan towns like in San Francisco, like San Jose and like Monterey. And so really we're looking at this Pajero Valley region is really the farming area around Watsonville. And in this area, you know, the most dense are Japanese immigration here really began in the mid 1800s to the late 1800s specifically in Watsonville. Most of the time, this first Issei generation of immigrants went to Hawaii first to work on the sugar plantations there. Some went from Hawaii to the West Coast, some went directly from Japan to California. But in general, those are sort of the two main areas here where that initial immigration happened. And this was mostly young Japanese men because they sort of were able to work these seasonal positions and highly intensive labor and a variety of fields, right? So plantations in Hawaii, but in the United States, we have logging camps, mines, fisheries, farms like in Watsonville, really a whole diversity of different fields here. And a lot of these immigrants were very highly educated with four to eight years of compulsory education in Japan at this time. And many people argue that this is why they found so much success and really revolutionized a lot of these businesses in the area. But of course, despite some successes, there was a lot of roadblocks in the way for many of these immigrants. And really I just, I won't go through all of these legislations, but I just want to show that very early on in the early 1900s, a lot of these laws and legislations that are sort of targeting Chinese immigrants already here in California, we're sort of just moved over to encompass Japanese Americans and people of Asian descent in general. Some of these, in particular, are the gentleman agreement of 1908 restricting the migration of unskilled laborers from Japan and really a really impactful one, the California alien land law of 1913, which denied the rights of all immigrants and Japanese immigrants to purchase property. And so this massively impacted sort of the experience of Japanese people coming to Watsonville and around the area. Later, that right to buy property was sort of amended and tied more to the ability for them to become citizens. So we'll see there's some gray areas there and working around that. But just so you know, there's a lot of sort of legislations already here in the early 1900s that sort of lead to the incarceration. The incarceration doesn't really come out of nowhere, so to speak. And just really quickly to talk about Japanese American incarceration in World War II. So on December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked and war on Japan was declared following day from the U.S. It was about a year later that executive order 9066 was signed by President Roosevelt. And this is what created the actual sort of official exclusion area. And you can see that thick black line on the west coast. So all Japanese people within that boundary were relocated sort of east into these relocation camps and incarceration camps. And on this map here, you'll see the big red triangles are sort of the official war relocation authority, the big sort of 10 camps that existed like Manzanar in Central California, like Granada and Amache and Colorado, these sorts of places. But you also see a number of other dots on here. The little black dots are sort of these temporary assembly centers established very hastily to sort of a preemptive move for many of these people before they were sent on to the main WRA camps. And so just taking another look here at sort of the expanse of this, it does go all the way to the Mississippi in the U.S. I have a big gold star on Rower all the way in Arkansas. That's where the Hurahara family actually ended up being incarcerated. So we'll keep that in mind for now. And as we mentioned in sort of the intro, I approach this as sort of a more general framework of archaeology of internment in general. And this was something that really appealed to me when I was an undergraduate student doing historical archaeology. And I really loved this book by Adrian Myers, the sort of edited volume that framed internment as sort of a more broader sense of just the restriction of movement of people. And so it was able to sort of be applied then to many locations, such as Nazi Germany concentration camps, as you can see sort of reference on the side, those are pictures from excavations there. As well as I looked at slavery plantations, like I mentioned, contemporary refugee camps, even today, housing Syrian refugees. This was in 2017 that I did that. But just taking a look more generally and thinking about, you know, what is similar about these experiences? What's different? Are there any similarities? And importantly for me, you know, what are the material culture for coming from these excavations really saying? I found that to be really fascinating because often the narratives around these spaces are construed or or not portrayed correctly. And I found archaeology really had a great opportunity here, sort of ground truth, some things, and those experiences with materials in the camps. And just a quick look at some archaeology going on in Japanese-American incarceration camps. There is a lot of amazing scholars doing work in camps across the country. Primarily this is like Jeffrey Burton at Manzanar or Bonnie Clark at Amache with her students as well. But there's a range of different topics that people cover in archaeology within the camps themselves. So consumption, gender expression, artwork, there's sort of a big look at the gardens that were created during World War II, you know, illicit activities like sake being made in the barracks, these sorts of things. But really importantly, in the last really last three years or so since 2020, there's been a major, major push from a lot of the Japanese diaspora scholars to look outside of this single five years of incarceration and doing archaeology only in the camps. And so often, you know, there's these edited volumes made and there's no archaeology to be saying post the incarceration camps, post 1945. There's some pre-war archaeology, there's logging camps that are looked at in Canada, for example. There's some, but even there, there's a big push these days to really look at these surrounding periods and try to construct that timeline more thoroughly. And so again, that's what I hope to really do here with this project. Theory and Home in Place, I'm going to go quickly through this as well for the sake of time, but just to say that through doing this research, you know, I started with this collection of materials sort of analyzing it from my archaeological perspective. But this project has really become quite ethnographic as well in terms of the information and understanding experience, right? Not only the Hirohara family, but other Japanese families in Watsonville in particular. And so thinking about the Japanese landscape as it's often called, and this landscape really goes along with sort of the idea of place or place theory that sort of posits this landscape as just all the alterations and the effects that the Japanese community had in Watsonville. And we see that landscape being developed in the camps and we see it from really primarily the Japan towns that formed in a lot of these areas. So yeah, linking it to there. But now I do want to talk a bit more about Watsonville in particular, right? So Watsonville was sort of where I started and when I was first thinking about this project, you know, the Hirohara family had a really unique journey and they did end up returning back to their home after the war to Watsonville. And a lot of questions that I received and questions that I had were, why might people want to return to where they were excluded from? What were those motivation factors? You know, they were all the way in Arkansas, right? That's not an easy journey. What was that pull? And so I started looking into sort of people's accounts of living in Watsonville in this community. And you'll see really quickly here that actually the Japan town in Watsonville became exceptionally prominent in the area. You know, as early as 1896, the newspaper is estimating 400 Japanese farm labors in that Pahoro Valley. So that's not in Watsonville City proper, but in the region doing farming. The first rental agreement in Watsonville in 1901. And Sandy Leiden wrote a great book about the Japan town here, pausing that, you know, by 1910, this Japan town really started forming on the south side of town. And by 1920 through 1940, it was one of the densest urban concentration of Japanese in the region, including San Jose and San Francisco in these places as well. So really, really prominent. And I just wanted to show some of this really simplified census data here that's looking at counties. So we have Santa Cruz County that basically includes Watsonville and Santa Cruz City. You can see this population kind of rising or at least staying the same through time, more or less in Monterey and Santa Cruz. But then looking at 1950, right, as we might expect that population dramatically decreased. So here, 1950, this then has it by city. But you know, if we take Watsonville and Santa Cruz and look at it compared to that 1300 number in the county before, clearly there was a big decrease there. So again, thinking what may have in particular driven your horror family to come back when it was such a challenging journey. And here's just a little depiction of that Japan town that was made in Watsonville right around 1920. And you can see kind of here in the on the bottom right of the map on the left. This is really focused in those bolded outlined buildings are where the properties were owned by Japanese people or people were working there. And really, this was a huge range of businesses, right? Anything from the Japanese American Civilians League that started to form right around this time to barbershops, bike repair, gas stations, really a wide diversity of businesses here. And it also stretches across the river. So this is located on the south end of Watsonville right on Main Street. So kind of on the east and west. And you can see that next map follows down below Main Street across the river. And there's a couple buildings there as well. That was actually where the Chinatown predated this Japan town that was made. And that's a quite common occurrence where this region was not a very highly desirable location. It was it's very prone to flooding. Maybe you've seen the Pajaro Valley floods in the recent weeks. This is right where we're talking about, right where that flooding is happening. So pretty common to double up in that sense. And here is a really awesome resource from Densho, the online repository for a lot of Japanese American diaspora sort of research and archival research. And this map, this is called like Sights of Shame here. And it allows you to, it's really neat. You can click on any city and it'll show you how many people were there before World War II, where people were generally traveling to and the number of people who returned. So it doesn't follow individual families per se, but it'll say 300 people left from Watsonville to Poston, Arizona, and 500 came back or something like this. And looking at these numbers, I just decided to do a couple of these cities that I was looking in like Watsonville, San Francisco, San Jose and Monterey, where I knew they have these still prominent Japan towns today. And in Watsonville, just like before from the census data, we see after World War II, there's a sharp sort of decline in that population, just like San Francisco as well. So I had one idea that maybe people, instead of coming back to Watsonville, they were kind of drawn to the larger cities nearby, like San Jose, for maybe labor opportunities or something. But San Francisco was sort of a surprise in that sense, because even San Francisco, that might have a lot of draws in that sense, lost nearly half its population. But when we look at places like San Jose and Monterey, they actually gained some numbers. So again, this might not say that everyone who left San Jose specifically came back, but certainly more people came back to San Jose from the region in general. So thinking, why might that be? And this is where we really get into that sort of community perseverance in these spaces that often a lot of people suggest it was a huge motivation here. And these are just some photos I took within the last year in San Jose. And you can see how visible this place remains today. And we think about the Japanese landscape and the impacts. In San Jose, you'll find placards and signposts all over listing and sharing sort of these experience and just showcasing how this really happened here. That's quite different from Watsonville, for example, where it's not really as public there. And we can see that in the Japanese American Civilians League here in San Jose on the top right. Really nice sort of blue and white building. Really beautiful. They're adding Japanese gardens to it around the outside of it these days. Just really showcasing that presence there. As well as the Buddhist church in the top left here, that was one of the few buildings to have an architectural style, really from the east, so to speak. And that's exceptionally rare here. So in San Jose, we have some really prominent features to look at. And that's one of the main arguments sort of that I talk about. These Japan towns and the communities that they form there, the support systems they form, really allowed for people to return at all if it was possible at all. They really needed that. And so that'll be our transition to the Redmond-Hirahara house itself and sort of the experience of the Hirahara family. And it relates that in quite a few ways. And hopefully you'll see that as well. But here's a couple images of the house. So on the left hand side, that was shortly after it was built. So that's about 1905 there with the Redmond family on the porch. On the right is when the house was excavated by Rob Edwards at Cabrillo University. So that was in 2005. So it looks quite similar to that today. Maybe a little different. I'll have a few updated pictures later. But in the middle is just sort of an aerial view of the city of Watsonville. And so in the middle here, you can see where the river goes. So that is where on the north and south side of that river is where the Japan town is. That little red circle there is where the Hirahara farmstead actually was. So this is not, you know, right in the city proper, but it is a couple miles away and pretty close right there in Watsonville. And so this farmstead or the Victorian house itself was built by the Redmond family in 1897 after already working on the land since 1893, sorry, when it was purchased by John Redmond. And John had his first wife who passed away while he was living there. And he had a second wife, Elah Redmond, who also unfortunately passed away in 1937. And it was only at that point where John Redmond put the property up for sale. And this was when it was purchased by Katsumi Tau by auction. And the Tau family knew the Hirahara family. They both were in Watsonville already at this time, and they were actually bound by marriage in a few places. And so the Tau actually passed down the farmstead to Fumio Hirahara in 1940 for like a dollar for whatever, right, sort of under the table, pass it down. And why could Fumio purchase the property? Well, Fumio was the children, or one of the children of Matoshi and Tau Hirahara, who were first generation immigrants, not citizens of the US, couldn't own property. But Fumio was born in the US. So he was 16 at this time. And he was able to put his name on the property and sort of do that official transfer. So it was in 1940 that Fumio, his parents and eight of his siblings, so 11 total members of the Hirahara family, moved in to this house. Here on the right is a really pretty family tree given to me by Naomi Hirahara, made by Katsumi Hirahara. And that red circle are sort of, and there's red underlines there showing the 11 members who I'm talking about. It's a little blurry, but you'll see Matoshi and Tau there on the left and a bunch of their children on the right. And naturally, you know, this was already 1940. So pretty quickly, the war was sort of escalating and tensions were building. And actually this is kind of why the Hirahara family ended up going to Arkansas compared to many other people in Watsonville. So in Watsonville, when that exclusion order was first being placed, and they were sending out these notices to people, Watsonville actually had a unique mandate at first, which was not the full exclusion zone, but just that everyone had to move east of that main street. So at first, it wasn't, you know, all of Watsonville being evacuated. It's just everyone to the west of Main Street trying to push people inland. And obviously this was devastating to that Japan town we just looked at that had tons and a number of businesses on the west side of the street. But in addition, the Hirahara family had to move from their farmstead right away just a couple of years later, right? First, they moved back to their home in Watsonville, and there's not as many records about this move as fairly temporary. We know from the Hanei family actually probably what happened. But essentially they moved back to Watsonville east of that Main Street, and then actually just sort of sensing where things were going, they decided to try to move to Fresno, sort of escape all of it in general and not deal with it. But in Fresno was where actually the full exclusion order kind of happened. So it's when the Hirahara family was staying in Fresno, thus they were sent to the Fresno Assembly Center and from there all the way to Rower in Arkansas. And that's pretty unique because the vast majority of Japanese Americans in Watsonville would have been most likely taken to the Salinas Temporary Center, the racetrack there in Salinas, and from there to Poston in Arizona, some to Manzanar as well, but primarily to Poston. So already we have sort of a unique journey of the Hirahara family in that sense. But really notably, while the family was in Rower, not all of them stayed for the duration in the camps. As they're outside of this exclusion area now, students like Fumio, who would have been right around college age at this time, actually went to Chicago to pursue his education. So he was still able to apply to college and get this acceptance letter and sort of move out. And this was par for the course for many people as well. So when I say the family returned, it wasn't all of them, but a good number of them who were still in the camp. And then just a little note, Jerome actually ended up closing earlier than most camps. It was just two miles away from Rower. So actually they spent the first couple of years in the Jerome camp. And then everyone when Jerome closed was moved to Rower on June 30, 1944 for the remaining year of the incarceration. And so some of the Hirahara family, mostly Isamu, Susumu, and Shiguru, returned to their farmstead on June 4, 1945, and with a number of children that they had at this time as well. And here's a photo of them sort of reconvening on the porch right there in 1945. But of course, they weren't the only family trying to return to Watsonville. The Hiraharas were lucky in some sense because they had a lawyer who they knew and a gardener who was able to watch and manage their property while they were away. But of course, not everyone had that luxury, like the Hane family. And here in the bottom left, you'll see Akihiro Hane pictured. The Hane's came back to Watsonville in 1946, him and his wife, and found that their home had been essentially looted and sold to someone else. So they had lost their property in these four to five years that they were away. But really uniquely again, the Hirahara family actually took in the Hane family and let them stay in their barn behind the house. And not only did they let the Hane family stay in the barn for the next three to four years, but also numerous other individual laborers and the Tau family as well who came back. We know they had connections to before. Some interviews with members of the Hirahara family who are no longer with us, suggest up to half a dozen different families staying at this barn in some point in time. So it creates this really, really interesting sort of multi-habitation context there on the site. And so this was sort of, you know, when these excavations began, there was no real idea of this connection to the Hirahara family, the Japanese-American incarceration in general. These excavations were done because the house was put on the National Register of Historic Places, but it was listed on the register for the architect who created it, with no connections to this sort of Japanese-American experience here. And thus, when they were doing these excavations, really the only goal was to figure out what the foundations were like around this house. And so they put sort of these four trenches around the house right up against it and sort of dug down to try to, you know, get to the foundations and see what was going on. And this is where we would kind of consider most of the artifacts belonging to the house coming from these four trenches. And that's where we get about 3,000 artifacts, you know, a range of artifacts, ceramics, glass, faunal materials, architectural materials, metal, really all sorts of stuff coming from here. And here I just have a nice map here of that. So those yellow highlighted squares around the house are sort of where those excavations happened, as well as sort of a general surface pedestrian survey of the farmstead and some surface skimming of some key areas, which I'll talk about in just a minute. And I'll focus now here on trench two, and I'm not going to go super deep in specific artifacts today, but to get a sense of kind of what we're looking at, trench two is kind of unique because it has the vast majority of materials, almost all of them came from trench two. Just looking at like the kitchen wares by weight, for example, it has almost all of them. You can see here is a little process of them excavating it. Here's a little profile of it. So you can see there's some stratigraphic layers that they divvied up when they did these excavations. These days with the materials and after analyzing it, that stratigraphy is not as strong as maybe we would like it to be. There's materials that sort of found scattered throughout these trenches. Oftentimes when I think of trench two, it's just trench two altogether, not thinking about these separate depositional events, which is a shame because that might have been a little bit easier to sort of tying in these direct habitation periods. Here's just a little sample of some of the materials here and some of the ceramics coming from trench two. So a range of, you know, import European import ceramics, sort of this flow blue on the bottom right and some transfer prints mixed in with some sort of unique finds like this Kohamari style bowl you'll see at the bottom left. And this is something that we actually used to date the trenches more or less because we knew that this was a family heirloom passed down by the Hirahara family. But just one example of some of the really sort of neat things coming out from here. And really basically I've sort of analyzed a lot of these materials, mostly looking at the kitchenware, trying to look at things that people were using for consumption, because a lot of these sort of statistical elements of this is just trying to see if there's a change of material culture over time with these different folks living there. So we have like the European Redmond family, early 1900s to the Hirahara family to beyond. And so trying to delineate these different contexts is a really big goal. And some of that has worked out pretty well. Some of that hasn't worked out very well. It turns out it's quite a challenge to try to find just a five-year difference in time with these trenches in general. But I'll show in a sec some of these really fascinating contexts that speak to some of our main questions here. Such as this carriage barn, right? So this barn was where the other the Hane family was staying. And you'll see on the bottom right this was just a little artist rendition of Aki's thoughts and remembering of how that space was organized. So you can see a couple of different rooms given to different families. He has the Hane family, the Tao family, I'm there. And this barn, you can see it was in pretty rough shape. That's a photo of it in 2005. It's no longer standing. It's completely demolished today. But fortunately, during this field school and during the excavations, they were able to sort of do a little survey of the barn. And what they found here was a number of really interesting text documents all along the walls. And so this was like a layering of different texts, some Watsonville newspapers in English and Japanese. There is a whole booklet that was more than likely this autobiography here of an anarchist in Japan. And theorizing why these text documents have been here has been a really interesting part of this collection as well. And at first, there's a lot of ideas that maybe this was just to sort of separate the spaces, make it a little more homey, add some decoration to the walls, these sort of things, separate the rooms. But there are other suspicions that perhaps this was the Hirahara family sort of minimalizing their connection with Japan. And around 1942, when the incarceration was going down, that's a very common experience that many people suggest that they burned documents, they burned letters, for example, that was sent just correspondence with Japan, anything that might tie them to the empire, right, to sort of hopefully, you know, divert suspicions away or something like this. But really, really interesting context. And also there are other theories that, for example, a samurai sword was buried on this farmstead, sort of this urban legend, right? But thinking about hiding these materials in that way and thinking about, you know, why might have these documents been where they were in the barn? It's really fascinating. And in addition, I just wanted to point out some of these saws that we found. You know, when I got this collection, I'm reading through all the notes and sort of how they labeled things. You can see these saws on the right are from the collection, and they were all labeled as Japanese saws. And I thought that was a little bit strange. I didn't really know what they meant by a Japanese saw, but it looked like a sickle kind of. So I'm like, oh, you know, I'll just call it a saw and move on and maybe look into it later. And so, like any good researcher, I went on Google and I typed in Japanese saw just to see what would pop up. And all sorts of brands came up looking almost identical. So like, for example, this guy here on the top looks almost identical to these saws. And sure enough, these are termed Japanese style sickle. Or primarily, these are used for bonsai gardening. And so here again, you know, thinking about these materials, it's a real challenge to sort of tie ethnicity to some materials, right? Archaeologically, like a Japanese saw. What does that even mean? Well, here there is some implications that we do have these, I mean, proudly Japanese made stainless steel sort of bonsai gardening saws. And this is also really interesting because it ties into the last sort of main context here on the farmstead, which is the garden that they made. And this garden is really, really important to a lot of this research because when I'm talking about scholars who are looking for these trends and changes of practice following the incarceration, actually creating gardens like this is one of the main trends that people are looking to. So in the camps themselves, it's well known like Manzanar, they're reconstructing a new Japanese garden they find every year. I think they're up to like 17 now that they're remaking. This is a very prominent practice that was done within the camps. And Bonnie Clark and others suggest that it was from that experience that many people took that home with them and continued these gardens at home. And sure enough, here at the Hurahara farmstead, Matoshi created a bonsai garden right when he returned back to his farmstead, you know, mostly for himself and to give to other members of his family. But in addition to the saws, we have a sort of surface scam of this garden. So this garden is really, really crucial in sort of having that context that is rooted post 1945 for sure. Right. Because we can look at those trenches all day long and sure the Hurahara family maybe put stuff in there at some point, but that could have easily been the Redmond family as well who were there for 40 years beforehand. Whereas this garden really only was created post 1945. So looking at some of the materials coming from the garden, comparing it to that other collection that we have from the trenches themselves, can hopefully speak more to sort of this change in practice over time, a change in materials, a change in material culture, and sort of showcase this community elements as well here at the Hurahara farmstead. How they took in all these additional families and were able to offer that support. I think it really speaks to in general this perseverance of the Japan town and that community overall. And it's something that I see today when I go to San Jose and I go to Watsonville and something I think is really well represented here in this story. There's some other cool things here like planter tags. So what they actually may have been planting there in the garden sort of scribbled with the Japanese text over it. Those sorts of things. And so although the garden wasn't fully excavated, they had a little surface skin and like I said, the barn actually never had any excavations under the ground there. So thinking about additional excavations on the farmstead with the Hurahara family has been something I've been doing, you know, for the duration of this project and thinking about the change of the landscape and can see over time. I like this map because 1930 and 1950, it's sort of out on its own. But today, if you're driving down Highway 1 southbound from Santa Cruz in between Watsonville, the highway actually runs right right alongside it. So you get a great view of this house. It's where everyone comes and says, you know, I see this house all the time. I never knew what it was. I thought it was haunted or these things, you know, this is what I get quite often. So even just sharing the story of the Hurahara family really has brought me a lot of joy in a lot of ways. And you'll see here is what the house looks like today. And so what they did once they sort of found those foundations and to preserve it, it sort of lifted up from its foundations and it's on all sorts of wood beams there. So the idea is, if the area continues to develop like it is, like they've got a hotel behind it and a gas station now, basically they would just move it somewhere else. You know, whether or not that's super effective is yet to be seen. There was a bunch of money raised to sort of recreate this house or, you know, manage it and bring it back to life. But that money was sort of mysteriously lost a couple million dollars with the Redmond family. And that's actually a big reason why the Hurahara family has been quite hesitant about getting into this big gung-ho project to do it again because they had this experience before in about 2005 to 2008. And they're just quite hesitant to do it again. So that's sort of where it is now. Again, it is listed on the National Register, but only for the architect who made it no connections to the historical significance of the location like I might think of, right? But in general, to conclude here and think of the future, we have this collection of materials that is at UCSC because Cabrillo ran out of room. So we don't have infinite space either. Sim Schneider thankfully took it in his lab, but, you know, he also doesn't know, you know, we talk about all the time, what can we do with it? And so I've been really working hard to try to find a repository around like the Paharo Valley Historical Society in Watsonville, I think would be amazing. We've talked about it a little bit. They're short for space two, so we'll see. The San Jose Japanese American Civilians League or the Japanese American Museum there in San Jose has shown some interest. Or there's a bunch of sort of online repositories, which we might have to do sort of just digitize the collection and get it out there in that way. But yeah, that's sort of where I am right now currently sort of working through this where we can store these materials. Also, you know, using the story and stretching it out to Watsonville and San Jose and just the community there and in these places and how supportive they were in one another and arguably why this return was even made possible and why these Japan towns are so prominent as they are today was really from people like the Hirahara family and others. Lastly, I guess I'll just conclude by saying, you know, like I said, I came into this with sort of a broader look at incarceration spaces. And so I hope to use this research and looking at, you know, the incarceration camps themselves and looking at spaces like this to try to see if there are any patterns that are created, you know, they're all sort of this barrack style housing, for example. We find that in concentration camps to Japanese American incarceration camps to refugee camps today. So although these places might have very different stories and backgrounds, you know, the way people are organized here seems really similar in a lot of ways. And looking through material culture in these places as well, I think, can really speak to sort of the true history in these places and the true experience of those people. So that's it for me. Thank you very much for listening. For Jacob. Sure. Yeah. Yes, I actually have kind of two questions. One is just factual, which is you mentioned that the Hiraharas came back in June of 45, which is actually before Japan surrendered. Yeah. That's kind of a factual question. Why would they even be let out? But the broader and totally different question I have is relationships between different groups that had immigrated from Asia at different times. You mentioned the Chinese, you got the Japanese, the Filipinos were often going to Stockton, including some of my in-laws. And I wonder in this whole context of executive order in 1966, whether there was support or even antagonism or any relationship between the different groups of people. I'd be curious to know about that. That's a great question. For the first part of the question, we don't really know actually why they were there early. Some ideas are that Fumio had this opportunity to go to school and some of the other families were looking into this. Some ideas are just that their home, somehow they worked it out with the lawyer and the gardener who were managing it, that they were like, oh, they should come back and sort of work the land or something. But it's not exactly clear exactly why they were able to. The Hanes were quite a time later by train. Could have been the distance they were going, maybe because they were traveling so far. But unfortunately, I don't have a great answer for you on that one. In terms of other immigrant communities, just like you mentioned, the Chinese population, really prominent in Watsonville, the Filipino population, it's very, very common that in these, you know, the Japantown area, so to speak, that all of these different immigrant communities would have been around that same area. So specifically, I'm thinking of excavations in San Jose, Japantown. What you really find are immigrants from all over of all sorts of different backgrounds living in those regions. And again, that's often because those were undesirable locations prone to flooding, not, you know, cheap. In Watsonville, it happened to be that they had a good relationship with the police officer there in Watsonville who really supported that community there. So a lot of people were drawn there for that sort of protection, in a sense, in that community. But in terms of antagonism, really, that was mostly white folks, you know, putting out a lot of prejudice and racism in Watsonville in particular, signs not allowing them into businesses, a lot of arson in the Japantown, you know, just a couple of years after it was completely burned down, there was, you know, the head editor of the Watsonville Pejoria newspaper said, like, how can we remove these people essentially from our city in a really public form? So there was a lot of these prejudices going on, but mostly from the white wealthy farmers, actually, who were likely intimidated by the success of the Japanese community, who were really being successful farmers and fisher people around the area. So, yeah. Thanks. Really interesting. A lot of good material. A nice presentation. Thank you. A question I have, you know, a really impressive number of artifacts. Do you happen to know if you've got anything that would indicate having visited or purchased memorabilia at the Treasure Island Fair? And I don't know if you're making any linkages there, because I think there are potentially some very interesting linkages. One of the main goals we had at the beginning was trying to see, you know, where are these materials coming from? Are they, are they being purchased by the family locally in Watsonville? You know, we know there's European ceramics, but we have the Komari Bowl. Was that actually from Japan? These sorts of things. The only thing I can say for sure is all of it is basically European import ceramics that were, you know, throughout the 1900s. There's nothing in particular, you know, I wish I could say, like, very particular in this date range or produced at this time. Most of it is quite large. And in terms of the specific place where they were found, other than communicating with the Hirahara family themselves, sort of understanding that they were, you know, going to Watsonville and purchasing it, I can't say for sure that anything came from a very specific place. You know, we had the heirlooms within the family. There are some things, you know, car parts and things like that that were certainly from around there in Watsonville. But unfortunately, not really directly from a specific place that they purchased it. Yeah, if you do find something, because the Treasure Island Fair was a really big deal in 1939, 1940, and they had a very prominent Japan exhibition. Are you familiar with that? I'm not familiar with that. They built the Japanese government actually brought over artisans, and they built this magnificent wooden castle. And so you had gardens and landscaping and bonsai and, you know, on. And it was a huge straw for Japanese residents throughout Northern California, as well as quite prominent, you know, for Anglos. Yeah, that's fantastic. And you know, there were Japanese grocery stores and specific Japanese businesses in Watsonville that we sort of focused on, that they probably, I could tie some things to those businesses in general. Yeah. But looking into the fair is something I'm definitely going to do. That would, in fact, I can tell you a little bit more about some of the stuff. And because there's a wonderful, interviewed a wonderful Japanese gentleman who had been to the fair, took film, he was living in San Francisco in Japantown, but he took film with his, I guess, eight millimeter. And then when he was in the internment camp in Topaz, show it, and he has this film of Japantown, and also of the Japan Day parades with US and Japanese flag going down. So it was a big deal, you know, for the Japanese community in Northern California. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I see a question up front and one in the back. Many years ago, I visited Manzanar on my way to Deep Springs College, and I don't remember much there. There's a monument there now. Recently, a Berkeley friend wanted to visit there because her ethnic background, she's Greek-Arab. Apparently, they were very, the Japanese were very kind to her group, and she felt sympathy that way. Now what's at Manzanar now? That's a great question. I actually excavated at Manzanar in 2018. So I was there then, working with Jeffrey Burton, who has done a lot of great work in sort of recreating aspects of the camp. So you're absolutely right. When you look at it, you're in Death Valley, and it's 105 degrees, and there's not really anything there. There's sort of the museum and some footings of some of the barracks. Mainly what they're doing, and this is sort of Jeffrey's philosophy, is he does not recreate anything unless the Japanese community specifically asks them for things. So I was able to volunteer and excavate there, and in doing so, there were other members, Japanese members of the community who had specific barracks. This is where my family stayed in this barrack, and so we focused on that in particular. One other thing in 2018 we were actually doing was doing the children's orphanage at Manzanar. So Manzanar was one of the largest camps in general in terms of population that was there. So they had, for example, a hospital, and it was the only camp to have an orphanage where children without parents were sent. He said, like, I would have never done this unless it was requested of me by the community to excavate this context. And it certainly was because they had amazing photographs of the playground out front, and they're like, we want to reconstruct this and see where they were located to see where these kids were, see if there's any artifacts underneath right that might speak to that. But they do keep it very minimum. Partly that's because there is also like prehistoric Native American archaeology there, and that's heavily protected. And so there are a lot of areas that they can't actually excavate because of that. Mostly they do the gardens or what they're sort of recreating visibly, but those are fairly low, you know, and they look kind of like dugout pools in a lot of ways. So visibly looking in, you know, it might look quite similar, but they have done a lot of work in terms of showing on the ground where these structures may have been and doing some recreation of the gardens. You walk around, they have the monument in the cemetery there. They have the reservoir for the water that has some like graffiti in it. I know he's published some recent papers on that. So there is a lot of ongoing stuff going on. Maybe, you know, like, when I was there, there was 13 gardens. Last I heard there were 17 gardens and they just keep finding them. So it is definitely sort of getting more visible over time. I hope that answers your question, man. Thinking about the photos that they had, David of Ansel Adams at the United States Center, the Dorothea Lang photos of Manzanar. She showed people. He showed the stairs. Yeah, so he's also really good at making sure Native people didn't show up in the pictures in California too, like Yosemite. Yeah. Thank you so much for your presentation. That was really interesting. And I also have a similar related question on how a lot of these distinctively Japanese artifacts were obtained. So I work in Japan and so I'm very used to seeing these sorts of artifacts. I've been working there for a long time, but seeing them in diaspora context in California is of course very interesting. And the question is, where did they come from to use the example of the the kama sickles or the no kohiri saws that you're working with? For instance, I think, well, I think it would be very interesting if it can be determined. It might be difficult to track down where exactly something was purchased or in what town, but do you have any ideas or any patterns where these artifacts and the different types of tools that were being used for gardening and things outside the family heirlooms? Are these things are these objects that were being purchased in Japan and brought over or brought by people who were trading them and they were sold through specialty shop or Japan towns where they manufactured here in California, perhaps because a lot of them are where they being brought individually by family or relatives. And then of course, the context, especially as people are facing internment, how much did these sorts of artifacts or these objects tie them in their minds to Japan where people feeling concerned about the idea of using distinctively Japanese saws and how that would be seen rather than using American saws or American sickles for gardening. I was just wondering about your thoughts on all of these questions of exchange and obtaining these Japanese goods. Yeah, that's an awesome question. I think I'm going to take the end of that really quick. Absolutely, people were hesitant about using those Japanese forms of tools. Like I mentioned, the samurai sword that's rumored to be buried here. There are like commas, kendo sticks, even just notes and letters to family from Japan were often burned, destroyed, documents, anything like that to tie. Like I mentioned with even the texts on the walls of the farm, you know, we find this, is it a coincidence that this book that's hidden away in the closet behind wallpaper, tucked in all Japanese text is talking about a Japanese anarchist. Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe it's not. And maybe this is an example of them putting those away and minimizing that visibility and that connection to the empire. In terms of where they're getting these materials, you know, one example. So I took the photos of the sickles and I went to the San Francisco, Japan Town and the hardware store there that they have. They said, yeah, you know, we make these here, you know, made in Watsonville. I think it's very, very likely that everything that the Hirahara family had was from Watsonville because they were living in Watsonville for a number of years before actually moving to the house, right? At least 16 years for Fumio to be born there. And unfortunately, that's kind of the time period we know the least about in their family history. But it's very, very likely that they were just going out to the Japan Town in Watsonville and purchasing their stuff there. And we know that they had those gardening tools there and they would have had those accessible. Even the Kawamari Bowl is a reproduction. Technically, there are very specific kilns in Japan that create these bowls that leave certain markings, you know, so they knew really quick. It was a reproduction, but something they've had in their family since 1915 or something like that. So in Japan at one point, but probably not these people specifically that owned it, maybe even further generations before. But yeah, that's most likely where it's coming from. So really, I just, you know, focus more on this post incarceration period, thinking about changes in practices and yeah, just getting it up around where they can. Thank you. Yeah. So on your Densho slide, you had where people came before and after. What struck me is that the far right side of that chart, it looked like everybody who went to Tule Lake from San Francisco came back. Is that right? So yeah, the kind of, but there's a huge caveat when we're looking at this, which is just X people were in San Francisco, 695. X people were there after. So the 695 people who went to Tule Lake, it could have been none of them returning. And just 695 other people from any of the camps. Do you see what I'm saying? So it's just 695 people, Japanese people were in San Francisco before who were sent to Tule Lake. 695 people returned to San Francisco from Tule Lake, but you know, other people were sent to Tule Lake who might have came to San Francisco. So yeah, it's a just happens to be a big caveat. It happens to be exact there. That struck me as pretty amazing. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're absolutely right. And we see Watsonville zero after, right? And it's, wow, you know, yeah, Tule Lake was a bad place. Yeah, that's, you know, famously the no, no camp and sort of used for different purposes there. But yeah, that's a great question. And a very important copy of the questions for Jacob. Well, let's get flooded, you know, where that, yeah, the power, like the Pajaro River. And the farmstead, they didn't actually get hit. The farmstead didn't actually get hit directly. Okay. You know, they are a couple miles away from the river at that point, which really saved them. It's really like square in the city there in that lowland area right around the river. A couple blocks in the city, but you know, devastating flood, but not not touching the farm. Is a family still farming there? Is it still an active farm? Great question. Yeah, I should mention that. So today, the farm is owned under private property. It's used. The fields are used around it for strawberry farming. And the farm company just owns it. They don't do anything with it. They don't go and, you know, it's all fenced off and blocked off. They have no problems with me showing up and walking around, you know, they're like, we're just going to be farming. So that's kind of where we're at, you know. Luckily, they've been, you know, receptive. They're, I wouldn't say they're interested or, you know, but they've been receptive and understanding. So yeah, right now it's just private property owned by that farm company. Got you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Great stuff. Any other questions for our speaker? Oh, Zoom. Yeah. Let me see if I can... Turning to some Zoom questions now. Someone... Actually, don't see any questions on the Zoom chat. So here we go. Well, then let's thank our speaker for his presentation today. Thank you. Thank you.