The Stockton Bukkyo Taiko Group performed over the weekend at the Cortez Obon Odori Buddhist Festival in Merced County, California. Though Taiko is strictly Japanese and Buddhism is firmly based in Asian culture, both have been widely adopted in the United States and made very American. The festival, though devoted to Japanese religion, served as a great example of how multiculture the United States is.
Small side story on Cortez - it was founded as a Japanese colony in the 1920s. But the folks adopted the name Cortez for their town because anti-Japanese sentiment was thick back then and they knew that many white-owned companies would not buy crops from the Yomato colony (the name of another Japanese town directly to the south). So they picked Cortez instead.
The town almost disappeared during World War II. Soldiers forced the townsfolks into a concentration, er, I mean internment, camp in Colorado. At the time, many banks would then call the loans of Japanese families once they learned that the family was in prison. That way, the banks could seize land that was nearly paid off and resell it again, thus destroying the Japanese families.
But in Cortez, something different happened. An attorney in the City of Merced (his name leaves me at the moment) sympathised with the Cortez families and was outraged at the actions of the government and the banks. So he visited the Cortez families in the camps in Colorado and became their attorney. He then leased their farms out to other area farmers and sued any banks that tried to seize their farms. Once the internment camps were dissolved, the Cortez families were able to return to their homes which had been maintained and paid for during their imprisonment. As a result, the area is still heavily influenced by the Japanese culture.
4 comments:
I think one of the fascinating things about the absorption by California of Japanese culture is that it's only been sixty years since Japanese culture was as foreign and frightening to Americans as Islamic culture is today.
We now revel in some of what were once thought to be the most extreme aspects of Japanese culture, sushi, "kamikaze" is used to connote fun, and Americans take Japanese religious ideas surprisingly seriously.
I liked the story of the local lawyer who helped the Japanese keep their land during the internment. Not sure if this would be of any interest, but...
Chancelucky: Pomegranate Fields Forever (fiction)
Really good story, Chance. The town of Cortez has fascinated me for a long time. I once wrote a long history piece on it and had it published. I have since heard that a copy of that story is in an office of the Cortez Ag Cooperative, which humbles me to no end.
It sounds like one of these days, I"ll have to check out Cortez.
Did the story appear in the Modesto Bee or was it in another publication?
It was in the Modesto Bee.
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