GREELEY — Bob Tokuyasu had no interest in selling the land that takes in the confluence of the South Platte and Cache la Poudre rivers until Robert Henry showed him the Tower of Compassion in Kanemoto Park in Longmont.
The tower and park were a gift to the residents of Longmont in 1973, intended to show appreciation for the empathy the community showed for the Kanemotos and other families of Japanese descent, particularly during World War II, a period of extreme xenophobia that Tokuyasu’s own family had experienced.
Henry was a friend and enthusiastic client of Tokuyasu’s welding skills. He also ran his own business preparing grain for storage from his friend’s property and loved to take his lunch a few hundred yards from the shop to where the rivers melt together.
The confluence, Henry thought, was one of the more beautiful spots in rural Greeley. Its free-flowing waters made him think of Tokuyasu’s family and how they survived one of the most trying times in U.S. history and found their way to Weld County.
Tokuyasu is a quiet man given to one-word answers to questions over lunch, even if he’s known you for many years. But buried beneath all that silence is a pride in his family’s persistence.
The Kanemotos were persistent, too. Goroku Kanemoto came from Japan in 1910 and worked on the railroad and in potato and beet fields until he could lease his own farm. His sons, George and Jimmie, who commissioned the five-level tower, became businessmen and leaders in the community and Buddhist church.
Henry, of course, didn’t know if such a tower was possible for the city of Greeley. So he focused on the meaning behind it.
“I tried to pitch it as a way that it could remember the Japanese heritage behind the land,” Henry said. “He bought into it.”
Indeed, Tokuyasu, in principle, agreed to sell the 35-acre property to the city of Greeley for its $300,000 appraised value. We will get into the details of how that happened in a bit, as it also inspires a conversation about the future of the land and how the public may be able to enjoy it.
At the very least, it will be a way to tell the story of his grandparents.
Tokuyasu is quiet, but he wants that story told.
Attack on Pearl Harbor instantly changed lives
Sojiro and Tome Tokuyasu had a farm in California before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Their lives, and the lives of many other Japanese Americans, changed drastically after that.
The attack quickly turned the American public against Japan: More than 97% favored the declaration of war against the country. This created an intense xenophobia against Japanese people living in the U.S. Just as an example, a column in a 1942 edition of the Denver Post’s opinion section read, “The only sane policy of handling the Jap aliens is to round them up and put them in concentration camps under armed guard where they will have no opportunity to stick a knife into this country’s back.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 tried its best to accomplish that goal.
The order, signed Feb. 19, 1942, eventually forced 125,000 people from their homes, nearly all on the West Coast, even though two-thirds of them were American citizens, and placed them in internment camps.
The Tokuyasus fled California, with their daughter, Tayeko, after they learned they would be placed in a camp. They either heard this through a process the U.S. called “voluntary evacuation,” when Japanese Americans were allowed to leave on their own before the order was enforced in late March, or through the grapevine.
They may have viewed Colorado as a safe destination, as did many others, because of the welcoming stance of Gov. Ralph Carr.
Carr, a Republican, famously and vehemently opposed the internment, an unpopular opinion at the time (he would eventually lose in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat as a result).
He was the only Western governor to accept Japanese into his state and the only major political figure to speak out against the internments. By the time the incarceration orders came, Soijiro and Tome were living in Costilla County in the San Luis Valley, where there were significant numbers of Japanese farmers in the valley before, during and after the war, said Bonnie Clark, a professor of archaeology at the University of Denver. Clark co-leads the Amache Community Archaeology Project, a collaboration committed to researching, preserving and interpreting the physical history of Amache, Colorado’s WWII-era Japanese American incarceration camp.
“During this time of ‘voluntary evacuation,’” Clark said, “the Japanese American population of Colorado doubled because of Carr’s welcoming stance.”
Despite his efforts, Carr could not stop the federal government from building Camp Amache in southeastern Colorado and bringing 8,000 individuals to the camp. Carr advocated for their fair treatment, but reports of the camps in the West generally are described as cramped and were located in harsh climates without much relief from the extreme temperatures. They also lacked enough food and medical care for the people held there.
Clark confirmed Sojiro’s presence in Colorado through his 1942 registration card for military service. But Clark could not find the Tokuyasus in any of the war relocation records. It’s possible that the Tokuyasus avoided internment, Clark suggests.
But Bob believes his grandparents and mother were held in that camp. The story circulating in his family for decades said they were held in “a camp in southeast Colorado” and held until they were released to go to Rocky Ford. That place, the so-called sweet melon capital of the world, was a popular place for Japanese Americans to work on farms.
Bob said his mother received a $20,000 check from the U.S. government and the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 for pain and suffering as a result of the incarceration.
Clark didn’t find Tayeko’s name either. But she said names were often misspelled in the records, and it’s possible they were held temporarily and that their residence in Colorado, given Carr’s stance, may have allowed them to be released early, as other Japanese Americans were. The congressional commission that did the research to pay the reparations had many more resources than her, she said.
“I think a really interesting part of this story is that there was so much shame and silence around this that a huge part of this family history is in the shadows,” Clark said, “and that is a very common experience for many Japanese American families.”
The confluence provided a sense of freedom
The Greeley farm was pretty much ready to go, but Tokuyasu’s grandparents and mother had to work as a family, without any help, to grow crops. They grew beans and corn and onions and kept some chickens and cattle. Tokuyasu’s mother talked about farming the land at an early age, even driving the tractor.
Tokuyasu loved growing up on the farm. He loved playing with the animals that lived there, even if he had to learn to laugh off the way his grandmother killed the chickens by pulling off their heads, and he loved four-wheeling. But he loved the farm the most because it was a place to explore, a luxury most kids don’t have anymore. There was a lot of freedom among the crops and beyond, where the river called to him.
“Just the chance to go do whatever,” Tokuyasu said.
Tokuyasu learned how to weld from his father, Kiyoshi “Bob” Mitani. Mitani took on the last name of his mother, who really wanted it to continue. Mitani’s father came from a family of 10 children and therefore was secure knowing his name would continue. Tokuyasu would later take his grandparents’ last name to honor them and what they went through.
Mitani served in World War II as a paratrooper before moving to Colorado, where he worked as a farmer and met Tayeko, Tokuyasu’s mother.
Years later, Mitani gave up farming as a career and opened a welding business. He was injured in a bad car crash eight years after Tokuyasu graduated from high school. Tokuyasu was already working for his father and took over the business when his dad could no longer weld. Tokuyasu lives about 100 yards from the welding shop. He is mostly retired now.
Tokuyasu played and walked next to the confluence throughout grade school, but he didn’t realize it was special until he showed it to his high school friends who marveled that two big rivers were joined in hydrological matrimony on his parents’ land.
“I learned, later on, that it was a pretty special place, Tokuyasu said.
Poudre River Trail could reach the property
By pure chance, Henry was in a lunch group, a poor man’s Rotary club, as he put it, with Mike Ketterling, a key member of the Poudre River Trail Corridor, a nonprofit that pushed for 14 years to build a 21-mile concrete path in Weld County.
Ketterling eventually hooked Tokuyasu up with Fred Otis, a real estate attorney in Greeley whose leadership was so instrumental in getting the trail built that the committee named a bridge after him.
Otis brokered the sale with high hopes for the land. The trail’s eastern most location is Island Grove Regional Park in Greeley. It “makes sense,” Otis said, to extend it to Tokuyasu’s property.
“The Tokuyasu property purchased by the city could be the eastern goal post for the trail,” Otis said, “and someday perhaps beyond that.”
In fact, Otis hopes that the city could build what he would call a “Confluence Park.”
“Denver has one,” Otis said. “Why not Greeley?”
It’s too soon to define a specific concept or even confirm that the property will function as a traditional park, said Diana Frick, Greeley’s director of culture, parks and recreation. The city, for now, is evaluating the property’s constraints — it’s in the flood plain, for instance, which typically influences a city to design a park as a natural area, perhaps with a trail, what Frick calls “passive recreation” as opposed to a place with a swingset and a big yellow twisty slide. But the city would want to recognize the fact that the confluence is a special place.
“Any future use would likely consider how to thoughtfully acknowledge the confluence,” Frick said.
The city has some time to do its research. The land is under a farm lease until the end of 2028. But Greeley couldn’t pass up an opportunity to purchase such a beautiful tract of land, especially since it contains the confluence.
“Opportunities to secure land of this size and location are limited,” Frick said, “so this allows the city to preserve long-term options for public benefit.”
Contract includes pledge to honor the family
Tokuyasu doesn’t know many other details about his grandparents. His grandfather died when he was 7, and his grandmother didn’t want to talk about fleeing internment camps. But he’s proud of their resilience. They worked hard to grow a life out of what would be universally regarded as some pretty rotten roots.
But Tokuyasu knows enough.
They’re the reason his father farmed and then had the freedom to open a welding business that Tokuyasu owns today. Tokuyasu faced some prejudice while attending Greeley schools, as other kids made fun of him because he was Japanese. He can’t imagine what his grandparents went through. But they gave his parents a life. They gave him a life. His son wants to build a home on the rest of the land as well.
There is only one sure thing in the city’s plans. It’s in the deed that the city must put up a memorial of some kind to honor Tokuyasu’s grandparents and recognize the history of the property.
The Tower of Compassion in Longmont was used as an example when Otis negotiated the contract.
Tokuyasu wants his grandparents remembered. Now the quiet man who usually speaks in one-word sentences has a way to tell the tale.