Wintersburg’s Okuda family and memories of life on the Bolsa Chica Gun Club

Mary Adams Urashima

Sakura: How Cherry Blossom Festivals took root in America

Mary Adams Urashima

Memorial Day 2015: Kazuo Masuda remembered

Mary Adams Urashima

Kazuo Masuda and the Nisei who served in the U.S. military were remembered at a Memorial Day ceremony at Westminster Memorial Park. The Masuda family story is important nationally, as this is the family specifically mentioned by President Ronald Reagan when he signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

The View From Manzanar

Mary Adams Urashima

If you don’t want to change your perspective, don’t go to Manzanar.

The McIntosh family of Wintersburg Village

Mary Adams Urashima

A Century Ago: Dawning of A New Year in 1914 - Part 2 of 2

Mary Adams Urashima

Read Part 1 >>The dawn of a new year, unrest and change A tremendous social shift was occurring as the world marched toward globalization. In Europe, 1914 would bring the beginning of World War I with the outbreak of conflict and declarations of war. Some from Wintersburg Village and Huntington …

A Century Ago: Dawning of A New Year in 1914 - Part 1 of 2

Mary Adams Urashima

A century ago, the New Year in 1914 brought both promise and uncertainty for Japanese pioneers in California.

The Japanese Mission Trail: Lost and at-risk history along the Pacific Coast - Part 2 of 2

Mary Adams Urashima

Read Part 1 >> Wintersburg Village By 1902, seventeen years after the first Japanese Presbyterian Mission was established in northern California, the Presbyterian and Methodist Evangelical churches in nearby Westminster had taken note of Orange County’s growing Japanese community. Rev. Inazawa was sent to investigate. By 1904, Rev. Inazawa and …

The Japanese Mission Trail: Lost and at-risk history along the Pacific Coast - Part 1 of 2

Mary Adams Urashima

The California State Parks describes the California Missions Trail’s importance as “humble, thatch-roofed beginnings to the stately adobes we see today, the missions represent a dynamic chapter of California’s past. By the time the last mission was built in 1823, the Golden State had grown from an untamed wilderness to …

Why Orange County's Japanese community built a church in Wintersburg

Mary Adams Urashima

The century-old document below is held in the archive of the present-day Wintersburg Presbyterian Church (the former Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission and Church). It is a compelling document, placing the Mission and Church site in the context of the historic struggle for civil liberties and the desire to become American. …