Kanaye Nagasawa: The samurai who forever changed California

Whereas the exhibit at Paradise Ridge is significantly smaller than the one earlier than the fireplace, it’s the solely everlasting exhibit within the US devoted to Nagasawa (the Museum of Sonoma County, which maintains an intensive Kanagawa and Fountaingrove assortment, has curated momentary reveals). The most important Nagasawa assortment resides in Japan, the place a museum preserving the legacy of all 19 samurai college students, the Satsuma College students Museum, opened in Kagoshima in 2014. Ten Nagasawa descendants attended the opening, joined there by Rene. 

Simply above Paradise Ridge, the town of Santa Rosa established the 33-acre Nagasawa Neighborhood Park in 2007, devoted in a ceremony attended by quite a few Nagasawa members of the family. And at Paradise Ridge, simply behind the plot of chardonnay grapes designated as Nagasawa Winery, a small fenced-in space encloses a newly planted tea plantation, the results of efforts to attach Nagasawa’s legacy with that of Wakamatsu Tea, which employed a few of California’s first Japanese immigrants in silk and tea manufacturing. 

“A whole lot of California agriculture owes its begin to Japanese immigrants. Just like the ‘Potato King’ and the ‘Garlic King’, in addition to the ‘Wine King’,” mentioned tea plantation founder Nao Magami, referring to Japanese immigrants George Shima, whose huge potato harvests led him to change into the primary Japanese American millionaire, and Kiyoshi Nagasaki, who grew to become the nation’s greatest garlic producer. “However when the Japanese had been despatched to camps in World Warfare Two, all of these tales acquired misplaced. Now we are attempting to tie collectively these legacies of those earliest California pioneers.” 

In 2021, the Wakamatsu group held its first tea ceremony at Paradise Ridge with Nagasawa members of the family in attendance. However maybe the very best and easiest epitaph for this outstanding man is the one added by his household to the plaque in Nagasawa Park, which outlines his life in simply 4 phrases: “Samurai Spirit in California”.

Rediscovering America is a BBC Journey sequence that tells the inspiring tales of forgotten, neglected or misunderstood points of the US, flipping the script on acquainted historical past, cultures and communities.

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