Seattle University Japanese Remembrance Garden Records
Scope and Contents note
The Japanese Remembrance Garden, located east of Hunthausen Hall on the Seattle University campus, honors the partnership between Seattle University and the Japanese American community. This collection contains planning documents, minutes, and reports of the university's Japanese American Remembrance Garden Committee from 2004-2006. The collection also includes artifacts, news clippings, photographs, and photocopies of memorabilia relevant to family histories and internment at Minidoka Relocation Camp during World War Two; documents from the Minidoka Reunion (2003) including the newspaper The Minidoka Irrigator and Nisei Veterans newsletter; selected sermons and photographs of Father Leopold H. Tibesar (1898-1970), who was a Maryknoll priest and friend to the Japanese community; landscape maps highlighting the campus garden designs of master gardener Fujitaro Kubota and his son Tom Kubota; a copy of Anna Tamura's Gardens Below the Watchtower: Gardens and Meaning in World War II Japanese-American internment camps (University of Washington thesis, 2002); a copy of Report on Seattle's Maryknoll, April 1944 by James Y. Sakamoto.
Dates
- 1940-1946, 2004-2006
Creator
Conditions Governing Access note
The collection is open for research.
Biographical/Historical note
Prior to World War Two, many Japanese and Japanese Americans lived and ran vibrant businesses in the neighborhoods surrounding the Seattle University campus. A few Japanese American students were enrolled at Seattle College in 1941, but compelled to end their studies when 120,000 people of Japanese heritage were forcibly relocated and held behind barbed wire in internment camps for three years, without having committed a crime and without due process. The Japanese Remembrance Garden honors the partnership between Seattle University, in accord with its mission and values of peace and social justice, and the Japanese American neighbors and fellow students who were subject to the injustice of Executive Order 9066. In the 1950's Seattle University hired master gardener Fujitaro Kubota, and later his son Tom Kubota, to design and install garden features on campus. The Japanese Remembrance Garden, dedicated on April 6, 2006, is the ninth Kubota garden on campus.
Extent
2.5 Linear Feet (3 boxes and 1 scrapbook)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
This collection, assembled from the Seattle University Committee for the Japanese Remembrance Garden, contains planning documents, minutes, and reports of the committee (2004-2006). It also includes artifacts, news clippings, photographs and memorabilia relevant to family histories and internment at Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho during World War Two, as well as selected sermons and photographs of Father Leopold H. Tibesar, a Maryknoll priest.
General Physical Description note
2.5 linear feet and 1 scrapbook box
- Agendas (administrative records)
- Clippings (information artifacts)
- Colleges and Universities
- Gardens -- Washington (State) -- Seattle -- Design.
- Gardens -- Washington (State) -- Seattle.
- Japanese Americans
- Japanese Americans -- Evacuation and relocation, 1942-1945
- Japanese Americans -- Washington (State) -- Seattle.
- Japanese Remembrance Garden (Seattle, Wash.)
- Kubota, Fujitaro
- Landscape gardening -- Washington (State) -- Seattle.
- Memorabilia
- Memorandums
- Minutes
- Photographs
- Reports
- Seattle
- Seattle University. Committee for the Japanese Remembrance Garden
- Sermons
- Task forces
- Tibesar, Leopold H.
Creator
- Title
- Guide to the Seattle University Japanese Remembrance Garden Records
- Author
- Mary Linden Sepulveda
- Date
- 2011
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- Undetermined
- Script of description
- Code for undetermined script
- Language of description note
- English
- Sponsor
- Funding for preparing the finding aid was provided through a grant awarded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
Repository Details
Part of the Seattle University, Lemieux Library and McGoldrick Learning Commons, Special Collections Repository