Our American Journey

Beginning about 1900, the fertile Platte River Valley north of Denver, Colorado, became home to a small but notable population of Japanese immigrants.  These hard working men, most of them single, were making a transition into farming after helping to build the state's infrastructure, notably its railroads, in the late 1800s.

Their attempts to fit in with their chosen communities met with discrimination.  They were excluded from social circles and civic organizations alike.  The prejudice against them peaked during World War II, when Americans labeled anyone of Japanese ancestry "The Enemy."  That label persisted even after the war, despite the fact that the sons of the first Japanese immigrants had proven themselves true Americans fighting Hitler's troops on the European front.

In the Colorado farm town of Brighton in 1948, a small group of Japanese American women formed an organization that provided them an outlet for socialization and fostered a sense of belonging.  Two years later, the local men of Japanese ancestry also organized.  The men set their sights on a larger goal: proving to the community that they too were proud and dedicated Americans, worthy of full inclusion.

I've told the story of Brighton's Japanese Americans in my new book, Our American Journey: A History of the Brighton Nisei Women's Club and the Brighton Japanese American Association, available soon through Amazon.com. 

ISBN: 978-1-4787-0290-0
Purchase from Amazon today! 

Advance Praise for Our American Journey

"Our American Journey is a priceless documentation of a generation and culture that ultimately settled in the Brighton area.  The stories of perseverance, steadfastness, fortitude and selflessness epitomize the contributions of the Japanese Americans who are such an integral part of the fabric of Colorado.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading this!"
     -Adele Arakawa, Anchor at 9News, KUSA-TV, Denver

"What a terrific story captured for generations to come.  Our American Journey is clear and descriptive, emotional and engaging."
     -Adam Schrager, investigative producer and reporter with WISC-TV, the CBS affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin, and author of The Principled Politician: The Ralph Carr Story

Japanese Americans in Colorado

A recent writing project introduced me to four generations of Colorado's Japanese Americans. I found that their contributions to the state's history were surprisingly significant yet largely unknown to most Coloradoans.

Starting about 1900, a small but hardworking wave of young Japanese men crossed the Pacific to disembark at the ports of San Francisco and Seattle, even as millions of westward-bound Europeans were stepping onto Ellis Island in New York Harbor. Unlike their European counterparts who arrived with families in tow, most of the Japanese immigrants were bachelors.

It is obvious that the Japanese bachelors intended to stay. Obvious too that they intended to start families. They called themselves the Issei (EE SAY), meaning the first generation.

Many found work with the railroad companies that were furiously constructing new lines across the West, riding the wave of industrial expansion accompanying the country's growth.

One of those bachelors was Katsubei Sakaguchi (KAT SU BAY   SACK AH GOOCHEE). Among the rail lines he worked on was the Moffat Road, an ambitious project financed by Denver businessman David Moffat. The "Road," actually the Denver, Northwestern & Pacific Railroad, began in the city and was to make its way over the Continental Divide to the Grand Valley and beyond.


Katsubei Sakaguchi worked on the Moffat Road
railway construction west of Boulder, Colorado.
One of the work crews is pictured here in 1909.

A horse-drawn wagon takes
Sakaguchi's vegetables
to market, 1914.

Railroad construction was backbreaking, and Isseis like Sakaguchi hoped and planned for a transition into farming as soon as possible. Railroad work had introduced them to the open fields along the South Platte River north of Denver where many took up sharecropping. To sharecrop one had to find a landowner willing to pay the costs of seed, supplies and farm equipment in exchange for labor. At harvest time, the land owner paid the farmer a share of the profits from the crops, if there were any.

Sakaguchi wrote to his home village in Japan for help in finding a "picture bride." Her name was Hisano. They first met when she arrived in Seattle. Together they settled into farming near Platteville, Colorado. The next year they moved a few miles south to work land near Wattenburg. Frequent moves were common in the sharecropper’s life. From 1915 to 1918 the Sakaguchis farmed east of Brighton before making a final move into farm ownership in 1919 when they were finally able to buy a 160 acre farm south of Brighton where other Japanese immigrants had already settled. The site of the Sakaguchi farm is now marked by the intersection of Colorado Highway 85 and the E470 toll road.

The farm house and yard were circled by cottonwood trees, as well as practical chokecherry bushes and apple and plum trees. Off a ways stood a shed for cucumbers and other vegetables pickled in wooden shoyu barrels. Sakaguchi sold the farm’s vegetable crops to the Kuner Canning Company located in Brighton. For the first few growing seasons, he made the deliveries with a horse-drawn wagon.

The resourceful farmer designed and built a traditional Japanese bath house, called a furoba, for his growing family, which by 1931 included 10 children. In the bath house, he installed a 100-gallon galvanized tank on a cement base. In a hollowed-out part of the base, he burned wood to heat the bath water. In the Japanese style, bathers actually lathered up and rinsed off before entering the tank for a relaxing soak in the hot water. When entering the bath, they had to submerge a floating wood pallet, by standing or sitting on it, to avoid burning their feet on the tank’s hot metal floor. Every Saturday night was furo: bath night.

The Issei farmers were often looked upon with suspicion as "outsiders," especially during World War II when they were unjustly linked to the military forces of Japan following that country's attack on the U.S. Naval Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December of 1941.

It is an understatement to say that Japan’s attack on the U.S. had an immediate, negative impact on all Americans of Japanese ancestry. The Issei - and their children, known as the Nisei (NEE SAY) generation - were suddenly viewed as “The Enemy,”cunning and cruel and bent on world domination. It would be an stubborn stereotype, one that would take a generation to reverse.

I've told the complete story of Brighton's Japanese American community in my latest book Our American Journey: A History of the Brighton Nisei Women's Club and Brighton Japanese American Association. Released on August 28, 2013, the book will be available soon through Amazon.com and local outlets.

Sweet Corn Colorado

A lesson in how dinner gets to the table

It’s August in Colorado: hot days, cool nights and crops ripening just beyond the city limits. Colorado sweet corn was calling my name. So yesterday, I took to the fields of Sakata Farms in Brighton. I arrived with a hunger for sweet corn. I left with a whole case. (What was I thinking?)

Now, I’m fanatic about freshness, and corn plucked from the stalk loses sweetness faster than a new car driven from a dealership lot loses the smell of money. The freshness clock was ticking. I had to act decisively…and I had to find the kitchen.

Day One: Dinner Time. With the freshness clock ticking, I steam-zapped half a dozen ears in the microwave, making sure everyone at the table had immediate access to butter and salt. And plenty of napkins. Because the corn was fresh - probably picked that very day - it was the best we’d ever tasted.

But what to do with the four dozen remaining ears? Listening from their waxed cardboard case, they heard me answer my own question: “I’ve got Joanna Sakata’s personal recipe for freezing corn.”

Seriously, using Joanna’s recipe provides a great lesson for kids about where our food comes from…and how much work goes into its preparation. (I can already see you moms nodding and smiling knowingly.) Take the kids to a farmers’ market. Let them talk to the farmers. Show them the fruits and veggies in their natural state, free of plastic wrap and Styrofoam. Bring home some corn! I suggest buying enough to eat the first night and two dozen more for the freezing process.

Day Two: 0700 Hours. With the freshness clock now clanging loudly, I was on the back deck shucking corn in the cool of the morning.

Back in the kitchen, I removed the kernels using a large knife and a Bundt cake pan. You place the butt end of the cob on the center hole of the cake pan and slice downward. Ingenious! The plump kernels fall into the pan all around.


Following Joanna’s recipe closely, my junior assistant and I placed 16 cups of corn and four cups of water in a kettle on the stove. By this stage in the operation I could see that the scope of the clean-up phase would be a bit daunting.

So fresh was this corn that my junior assistant was sprayed with juice. I found her an apron.





Almost done! (Sounds easy, doesn’t it?)

Next, cool the kettle by setting it in a sink filled with ice and cold water. When cool, fill quart-size freezer bags or other containers with corn, placing a little liquid in each one.  Two dozen ears of corn yield about five quart bags. They are now labeled and dated and chillin’ in the freezer even as I type these words.

The cleanup proved to be not only a daunting job but a lonely one, too. My junior assistant - and representatives of two other generations in the family - had already lost interest. I prefer to think that they had already mastered the lessons I hoped to teach. Sure, I'll go with that.

Lots of work, indeed. But that taste of summer will be welcome long into the fall.

P.S. Music always helps a task seem lighter, so here’s another suggestion. While working together in the kitchen, sing the following lyrics to the tune of “Sweet Home Alabama.”

Sweet corn Colorado 
Where the skies are so blue 
Sweet corn Colorado 
Lord, you always make me drool

Colorado

Mmm Mmm Mmm

To share Bob Sakata’s inspiring story with your kids, check out my biography for young readers: Bob Sakata: American Farmer.

Memorial Day in Leadville, Colorado

Evergreen Cemetery, Leadville, Colorado, Memorial Day, 2011

I spent Memorial Day weekend in historic Leadville, Colorado, in the mountains 120 miles west of Denver. 

If the snowcapped peaks that completely encircle Leadville don’t take your breath away, the altitude will.  At 10,200 feet above sea level, even those of us from the Denver area - only a mile high - occasionally pause to take an extra breath or two.  

By 1880, silver taken from Leadville's mines made rich men of some of its 30,000 residents, including Horace Tabor, whose second marriage to a much younger woman known as Baby Doe was tabloid fodder in the 19^th Century.  

But the residents who caught my attention - and my heart - were the lesser known folks, some nameless, now "inhabiting" Evergreen Cemetery on the edge of town.  Cemeteries provide a fascinating look into the past, and Evergreen is no exception.  Probably a mountain meadow at its founding in 1879, Evergreen Cemetery, appropriately, has been overgrown by a shady, green pine forest.  

A few famous names associated with the town's history are commemorated on headstones at Evergreen, but more intriguing were those recording the deaths of children.  It’s a cliché to say that “Life was hard back then,” but it is no less true for having said it.  In studying the past it's important to remember that early childhood mortality was a fact of life in the 1800s.  

Thomas and Mary Flannery, Irish-Americans judging
from the family names, lost five children to smallpox
in an epidemic in 1883.

Take the case of one Leadville couple, Thomas and Mary Flannery.  According to a stone placed sometime after their own deaths, the Flannerys lost five children to a smallpox epidemic in one year, 1883.  Incredibly, at the time of their deaths, their children ranged in age from one to 21.

(In Europe, at the close of the previous century, smallpox was killing an estimated 400,000 people per year.  After vaccination campaigns throughout the19th and 20th Centuries, the World Health Organization was finally able to certify the eradication of the disease, but not until  1967.)

Headstone art from the 1800s fascinates me.  A common theme for children's markers in Leadville is the tree of life, cut short, of course, by death, with the comforting image of a sleeping child.  At rest. 

A child "rests" beneath the tree of life.
The tree - and the life - cut short and far too early

For me, it was a different kind of Memorial Day.  I hadn't planned on visiting a cemetery...just happened to come upon it. (As most of us will some day, I suppose.)  

My visit to Evergreen Cemetery  gave me the opportunity to reflect on Leadville's past, not only its Silver Barons and celebrities but  also its common folks, like you and me.

Adobe Castles on the South Platte River

Fort Lupton
Replica of the 1840s
trade center north of Denver

Museum docents get some astute questions from school kids.  “Where’s the giant T-Rex?” one young visitor asked in the entryway at our local museum.  In answering, I was careful not to squash his enthusiasm.  We have no fossils there, or at least I’ve not seen any. 

In the gallery I focused the class’ attention on the subject at hand: the history of our area, the St. Vrain Valley.  I explained that the name of our valley, the river that flows through it, and the local school district all hark back to buffalo robe trader Ceran St. Vrain.  He, along with William and Charles Bent, operated the most successful trading company on the plains in the 1830s and ‘40s.  In 1833 they built Bent’s Fort, on the Santa Fe Trail, and in 1837 Ceran St. Vrain supervised the construction of a second “adobe castle,” this one on the South Platte River, not far from our museum. 

It’s a good sign when kids catch the contemporary tie-ins to history so I was glad to see the group make the connection with Mr. St. Vrain.  Then a hand went up.  It belonged to the young man so earnestly searching for a dinosaur earlier.  “You mean...” he started hesitantly, “they named him after a river?”

Powder horns and leather
haversacks in the trade room
at Fort Lupton

Well, not exactly, but his question put me into research mode looking for details about the four trading forts that once attracted mountain men and Native Americans alike to the banks of the South Platte River. They've gotten far less press than Bent's Fort, the original business model of success on the prairie.

What I found was the spirit of American cutthroat competition.  Two years after Bent's Fort was built on the Arkansas River, entrepreneurs Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublette went north, in 1835, to the Platte and began their own adobe trading fort near present-day Platteville.  They called it Fort Vasquez.  Today the Fort Vasquez historical site and a small museum are managed by the Colorado Historical Society.

In 1837 a man named Lancaster P. Lupton erected his own adobe trading fort...just seven miles south of Vasquez's namesake!   Fort Lupton is now being replicated near its original site by the South Platte Valley Historical Society.  Though SPVHS volunteers are not employing the 19th Century construction techniques used by the National Park Service to reconstruct Bent's Fort, their final product will be a fine evocation of Colorado's early history.


Traps at Fort Lupton


Business must have been brisk on the South Platte in 1837.  That same year a third trading fort - this one probably a wooden stockade - was built by Peter A. Sarpy and Henry Fraeb.  Called Fort Jackson, it was half way between forts Vasquez and Lupton.  Location, location, location!!!

The three new forts represented a challenge the Bent brothers and Ceran St. Vrain evidently could not ignore, and, not to be outdone, they joined the building frenzy of 1837.  St. Vrain himself supervised construction of a fourth Platte River castle, a few miles north of the upstart contenders.  The name of Ceran's trading post evolved for a few years but soon became known widely as Fort St. Vrain.

Ceran left his youngest brother, Marcellin, in charge, and the Bent-St. Vrain brand whomped on its competitors.  Within a year the Bent & St. Vrain Company bought - and burned - Fort Jackson.  Fort Vasquez changed hands once and then was abandoned.  In 1844 Fort Lupton was shuttered by its financial backers.  (I joke that Bent's Fort was the WalMart of its day.  The analogy seems complete to me now, since that merchandising giant too is often the death knell for local businesses.)

By 1845 the entire buffalo robe trade was drying up.  The era of good feelings between whites and Native Americans was dying.  Fort St. Vrain slipped into a state of neglect.  When Francis Parkman saw it in 1846, the building was already "miserably dilapidated."  But according to Halaas and Masich in Halfbreed, their great biography of George Bent, in 1849 William Bent was still able to make the fort liveable, compelled as he was to flee with his family to the crumbling Fort St. Vrain to escape the cholera epidemic wiping out half of the Cheyenne Indians on the southern plains.

I'd you love to time travel back to the 1840s.  Comparison shopping in the adobe castles along the South Platte River would have been quite an adventure.

Here are some book titles and links for further reading:

Bent's Fort: Crossroads of Cultures on the Santa Fe Trail by Melvin Bacon and Daniel Blegen


Bent's Fort by David Lavender
Halfbreed: The Remarkable True Story of George Bent by David Fridtjof Halaas & Andrew E. Masich
The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman
Links: Fort Vasquez    Fort Lupton    National Park Service

A Vote for Women and Colorado

Reading Tom Noel’s recent column in the Denver Post, I thought I had caught good Dr. Colorado, the foremost expert on our history, in an embarrassing mistake.  "Name the first state," Noel challenged, "where men voted to give women the vote."  His answer: Colorado.

No, I thought, that’s not the way I heard it.  It was Wyoming that first gave women the vote.  Wyoming, that hot-bed of liberalism to our north.  (Feel free to use the “Comment” section below.)  What a coup I had accomplished.  I was ready to overthrow the Good Doctor and accept his crown. 

Then I did some double-checking, always a prudent thing to do before starting The Revolution.   I started with the source of all knowledge: Wikipedia.  Yes, Wiki said, Wyoming’s women have been free to vote since December 10, 1869, when Wyoming was still a U.S. territory.  Here’s visual proof courtesy of the Library of Congress:

An Act to Grant Women of
Wyoming Territory
the Right of Suffrage
and to Hold Office

As you can see - if you zoom in on the page - in the territorial constitution is Chapter 31, “An Act to Grant to the Women of Wyoming Territory the Right of Suffrage and to Hold Office.”  It falls immediately after guidelines for dealing with lunatics and drunkards, just before the apportionment of the territorial House of Representatives.  (Again, the “Comment” section is below.)

In 1890 the Equality State was founded, and women's suffrage came along for the ride.

 

So what about Noel's claim that Colorado was first in women's suffrage?  Puzzled, I reread his challenge: "Name the first state where men voted to give women the vote."  Colorado joined the Union in 1876.  Colorado men voted suffrage for Colorado women in 1893, just as Dr. Colorado claimed.  A trick question if ever there was one. 

Anyone determined to keep Colorado history alive should read Dr. Noel’s column.  “Some of us think Colorado is a special place,” he writes.  “We need to educate our youngsters on why Colorado is special and how to keep it that way.” 

Bravo!

Unfortunately, Dr. Noel’s comments are a reaction to what he sees as a sad situation.  Colorado history - and the social studies in general - have been deemphasized in our public schools in recent years.  The reason?  Vital topics like history, geography, civics, and economics are not tested on the almighty CSAPs.  So, we teach to the test and forget the rest.  Well, not completely, but he makes a valid point. 

Teachers, you know what I mean.  You push your kids to improve - to excel - in reading, writing, math and, later, science.  Those are the subjects the kids are tested on each spring.  Those are the areas we emphasize.  Of course, they're fundamental, though fundamentals are empty without content and context, people and place and time - history, in other words.  But enough preaching to the choir.  Read Tom Noel's column for yourself.  It actually contains some good news on the history front. http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_16820725

If you've forgotten the details of your own civics class, here's another pertinent fact: The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1920, well after women were already voting in Wyoming and Colorado.  The 19th states simply "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

P.S.  The Wikipedia article on women's suffrage is quit fascinating.  Check it out,too.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage-in-the-United_States

Who Are These People?

Let's be honest.  Most of us are curious about the lives of others.  Okay, some of us - writers in particular - are downright nosy.
 
I know that young readers share that curiosity, and it's part of what makes writing biographies for them so rewarding.  But I'll admit a bias: A biography written for young readers should not only educate but also inspire.  (I won't be writing about Charles Manson anytime soon.)  I choose my subjects carefully, for that inspirational angle.

Right now I'm researching the lives of four native-born Coloradans, all of whom have achieved admirable accomplishments, here in Colorado, in Washington, D.C., and all the way into outer space.

A second bias pushes me to look for elements that shape a person's life story into a graceful arc, the old beginning-middle-end of the fiction writer.  Of course, not everyone's life fits that mold and the arc of a biography shouldn't be forced, but I'm always looking for connections that will wrap a young reader's understanding of a subject into a neat package.

One element is contrast, especially the difference between childhood circumstances and adult accomplishments.  Ken Salazar grew up on a ranch in Colorado's San Luis Valley.  The family home had no electricity, no telephone.  (And he's younger than I am!)  Today Salazar is U.S. Secretary of the Interior.

Coincidence is another intriguing element.  I remember being enthralled by all those chance meetings between characters in Charles Dickens' novels.  Two of the Colorado-born NASA astronauts I'm researching, Vance Brand and Jack Swigert, were born the same year, 1931, Brand in Longmont; Swigert in Denver.  During high school they both played football and may have been opponents in one important game.  During Brand's senior year, according to his school's yearbook, Longmont was trounced 34-0 by a "big bunch of boys" from Denver East, Swigert's school.  Both went on to make history exploring the outer reaches.

Scott Carpenter, born in Boulder, spent his childhood living in his maternal grandparents' house at the corner of Aurora Avenue and 7th Street.  He named his 1962 space capsule Aurora 7.  (According to Carpenter, that was pure coincidence, not intentional.  He says, however, that people in Boulder still like to believe their local intersection is memorialized in NASA history.)

So now, it's back to fitting the pieces of those arcs together into inspirational - and true - stories.

Lessons in an Ear of Corn

It’s corn season.

At my neighborhood grocery store, boxes of sweet corn are stacked nearly as high as the stalks they grew on here in Colorado. I like buying local produce. It makes me feel good to support the area economy; it keeps the impression of my carbon footprint a bit lighter; and it puts the sweetest corn on my plate just a few days after harvesting.

In each ear of corn – from Sakata Farms near Brighton – lives the sweet story of America’s promise and the generosity of its people. In light of today’s brutal economy, cynics may say the American Dream is all but dead. They may claim that success stories are old-fashioned and, frankly, a bit corny. (Sorry, I could not resist.)

But Bob Sakata’s success and his generosity grew from similarly bitter soil in one of the nastiest national climates in our history. The U.S. had limped through a crippling economic depression. Immigrants and the children of immigrants who looked “different,” including sixteen-year-old Bob, were perceived as threats and “the enemy,” even though he had been a citizen since birth and wanted only to finish his high school education and launch a career. Sound familiar?

There are lessons waiting to be pulled from an ear of Sakata Farms corn by a thoughtful parent or teacher. There are lessons about the hopes of two centuries of immigrants to our country. Lessons about personal tragedies and the exhausting effort needed to overcome them. Lessons about goals and heart and intelligence and, most difficult perhaps, forgiveness and generosity in the face of discrimination and hatred. And, did I mention, lessons about success.

Bob Sakata

At 84, Bob Sakata still loves to share those lessons with young people. In fact, Bob admitted to me that the one reason he agreed to sit for interviews was that my book would be written for young readers. Specifically, I believe, he wanted to help preserve the story of the 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry who held their heads high and obeyed our government’s order to assemble for internment – imprisonment really – after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Bob Sakata’s story is about so much more than corn, but whether you are at the dinner table or in the classroom, I invite you to dig in!

My biography of Bob Sakata for ages 10 and up is available from http://www.filterpressbooks.com/.

Bent's Fort Celebrates an Anniversary

Bent's Fort as it might have looked in 1846

Bent's Fort celebrated an anniversary of sorts the weekend of June 5th.  The fort marked its 50th year as an official National Historic Site, part of the National Park Service.  And what a weekend!  Costumed "interpreters" - including barefooted kids - brought the year 1846 to life.  Fiddles screeched, cooking fires burned, and horses whinnied.  It reminded me of my first visit to the fort in the summer of 1993, when I caught the Western history "bug" and bad - but that's a good thing.

The fort's bookstore manager, Elaine Leadabrand, had invited me and I was happy to join the anniversary festivities.  In my writing I try to demonstrate for young readers how similar their lives are to those of folks from the past, but on the morning of June 5th I was reminded of one noticeable difference: the pace of life.  On the way to the fort I managed to get myself positioned right behind a dozen or more mountain men on horseback who were also headed to the fort's rendezvous.  For the record, mountain men on horseback travel five miles per hour tops, even when accompanied by the county sheriff.

My years of teaching high school ingrained my neurological system with a keen sense of timing.  I'm never tardy for a class...or an appointment.  But I'd never been behind a band of 1846 mountain men on the way to class, either.   At nine o'clock, the hour I'd promised to be at the fort, I saw a road sign that read "Bent's Fort 10 miles."  Doing the math, I knew I would be quite late, but after about 20 minutes of the 1846 pace, during which I literally stopped to smell the sage brush, the mountain men found an open field and rested their horses.  I was back to 2010 and 55 miles per hour. 

My late arrival was no problem, but I sure got a good dose of perspective that morning about time and distance in the 1800s.  It's a lesson I will definitely incorporate in my writing from now on.  As remote as Bent's Fort is, there was already a parking lot full of visitors there that morning, including a former student of mine and his parents.  Wow, you never know who you'll run into in 1846.  In fact, I talked with many families who share an interest in Colorado's history and the Santa Fe Trail; and I enjoyed making my small contribution, playing and singing "the greatest hits of the 1840s."  It was the first time I had actually sung those songs on the Santa Fe Trail!  I hope it won't be the last.

 

Read the history in Bent's Fort: Crossroads of Cultures on the Santa Fe Trail http://www.amazon.com/Bents-Fort-Crossroads-Cultures-Santa/dp/0865410623/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312643600&sr=1-1