The Samurai of Gold Hill, by Yoshiko Uchida (Berkeley : Creative Arts Book Company, 1985)
"They had finally come to the end of their journey. This was the Graner house and this was Gold Hill. The Wakamatsu Colony of Japan had arrived at last." -- from The Samurai of Gold Hill, by Yoshiko Uchida
In 1869, the first colonists from Japan to go to the United States traveled from Wakamatsu to California, settling in the tiny hamlet of Gold Hill. Yoshiko Uchida fictionalizes their journey in The Samurai of Gold Hill. Fact blends with fiction as Uchida relates events leading up to their migration. Shogun rule has ended in Japan and so has the need for samurai warriors, such as 12-year-old Kochi's father. With much secrecy, Kochi's father makes plans with Herr Schnell, based on J. Henry Schnell, the "trusted advisor" to the defeated Lord Katamori Matsudaira, to establish the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm at Gold Hill. Others join them. When the ship sails from Yokohama for San Francisco, thirteen individuals, including Herr Schnell's "beautiful Japanese wife;" their daughter, Toyoko; her maid, Okei, also based on a real person; Rintaro, a carpenter; farmers and craftsmen, sail west to new lives.
The new immigrants have a difficult time. They are not used to the weather, especially the long periods with no rain. The silk worms die for no apparent reason and their trees and plants struggle to survive. While some of their neighbors help them, the prejudice of others eventually assures the failure of their colony. Within two years, all of the colonists except Okei, who is taken in by a local farm couple, are forced to move on. Interestingly, most of the colonists, including Koichi, who had dreamed of becoming a samurai like his father, do not return to Japan, but continue to build lives in California.
Written for older children, but of interest to adults, The Samurai of Gold Hill shares a little told story from history. As the book ends, you're left with a feeling of admiration for the Wakamatsu colonists and are reminded of the brutality of prejudice.
If you're traveling in the Sierra foothills near Placerville, you may want to take a short detour to Gold Hill. At the intersection of Gold Hill and Cold Springs roads, a California Historical Landmark marks the site of the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony. Okei's gravesite is on private land nearby.
"Koichi wrote a long letter to his grandmother in Wakamatsu. 'Herr Schnell says that everything is going to be fine now, and that when these new plants take root, we will have some fine crops and will be able to sell tea and make lacquer and wax and oil. And when the mulberry trees are growing well, we will buy silkworm seed. Then maybe the others will come from Wakamatsu. Maybe you will come too." -- from The Samurai of Gold Hill, by Yoshiko Uchida
Website
For more on this fascinating story see:
http://www.directcon.net/pharmer/Wakamatsu/Wakamatsu.html
"Coming as they did to a totally strange and foreign land, it was natural that the colonists preserved their attitudes, values and traditions of the old feudal society they had left behind. They were plunged into the boisterous, crude life of post-gold-rush California, and it is a tribute to their courage and patience that their farm survived as long as it did." -- from "Author's Note," The Samurai of Gold Hill, by Yoshiko Uchida
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