Gaman and Bayanihan
by Susan Ozawa Perez (Board Member) pictured here with her father Dr. Joe Ozawa
The Los Angeles Planning and Land Use Committee is considering whether to designate my family’s former boarding house and its next-door extension, the Obayashi Employment Agency — as historic cultural monuments (HCMs). The LA Cultural Heritage Commission has already recommended the sites to be designated as historically significant and as owned by those of historic personage. This was one of the Commission’s first designations of a non-celebrity type family to be considered of significant historic personage.
I am the great-granddaughter of Sukesaku and Tsuya Ozawa, the previous owners and proprietors at the boarding house at 564 N. Virgil Ave. George and Shizuka Ozawa were my grand-uncle and aunt (long time owners of the Ozawa Boarding House next door at 560-562 North Virgil Avenue).
These buildings are extremely rare examples of prewar Japanese boarding houses, and the only two used both before and after WWII that remain standing, representing a past that is virtually erased from physical history. Their consideration for perseveration as historical monuments is significant, as less than 2% of listed Historic-Cultural Monuments (HCMs) in Los Angeles City are associated with Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) heritage, a city whose AAPI population stands at roughly 15%.
The boarding houses are humble structures and part of a larger story of a burgeoning middle-class of Japanese immigrants at the turn of the last century. Functioning as a first stop for recent immigrants without family ties in the US, it housed, fed and through its extension building, served as an employment agency that sought placement and the advancement of more recent immigrants from Japan. Later, it would become a place of refuge, providing support for the economic advancement for the Japanese American community after WWII when our families were released from incarceration. This support and assistance were central to our collective survival, as formal employment for Japanese Americans was extremely limited due to ongoing discrimination.
My father, his brother and cousins spent much of their childhoods at the boarding house as my grandmother Doris and my grand-aunt Shizuka, staffed it. They cooked 30 meals, 3 times a day for roughly 40 years.
My family purchased this structure through capital raised through hard years of sharecropping in the San Joaquin Valley and from earnings from their fruit stand on Virgil Avenue, Roy’s on Heliotrope and Melrose.
Ozawa family in early 1900s. From left: Joe Naoshi Ozawa, Tsuya Ozawa, George Tadashi Ozawa, and Sukesaku Ozawa
This boarding house could have been lost during World War II when all those of Japanese descent, citizen or non-citizen, were forcibly removed and given 48 hours to take our entire families and only what we could carry to an uncertain future of incarceration. However, my great grandfather, Sukesaku and grandmother Tsuya, due to the Alien Land Laws, had previously bought land under Caucasian friends’ names. Family friends, the Arreolas, who were Mexican but American citizens, also held the title to land of theirs. This community of non-Japanese neighbors and friends were also key to the Japanese American communities survival and continuity in the face of incarceration. When Executive Order 9066 was issued and Japanese were rounded up, Frank Box, a family friend and Sunday school teacher took over the power of attorney for my families’ properties in November 1942 during the war and returned the power of attorney to the Ozawas after the war ended. He paid the taxes and insurance on the property so that they were never seized by the government like so many other Japanese properties.
Heart Mountain, WY, where my family and families from this part of Los Angeles were interred during WWII
While humble physical structures, they represent not only Kinship ties and community ties that were legacies from the Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan; they also represent a uniquely American story of frontier development, successful and painful community perseverance to create deep roots in a new country and the community’s contribution to the American industrial advancement at the turn of the century. They also tell a story of cross-cultural mutual support and trust which is the fundamental backbone of all community development and advancement, particularly through times of historical antagonisms and hardships.
The buildings preserve the history my family was part of; a multigenerational Japanese American community we housed, fed, and provided support to as a central node in the community. The Ozawa family, as one of the first founding families in the Madison/ J Flats enclave, saw it their responsibility and honor to care for and support neighbors and kin members. My great-grandfather, Sukesaku, was one of three founders to establish the Hollywood Japanese School [Hollywood Japanese Cultural Institute, 3928 Middlebury Street Los Angeles, 90004] using their sons’ names due to the Alien Land Laws. [The school taught Japanese language and culture, tea ceremony, ikebana and was the community center for the Japanese.] He was also one of the main supporters of the Hollywood Judo Dojo.
The Ozawas were also part of the Shizuoka Ken Jin Kai. The “ken jin kai” were based upon Japanese prefectural bonding and as the Ozawas and Kanazashis had been very prominent in Shizuoka, their participation in the ken jin kai was filled with cultural activities such as picnics, drama shows, musical talent shows, and yearly gatherings in local parks. They also celebrated the famous “obon” festivals (times of dancing and fun activities which go back to the Japanese tradition of “obon,” which is the welcoming in of dead spirits similar to the “festival of hungry ghosts” in China).
Joe (my grandfather) and George (my father’s uncle) were members of the Hollywood Gardeners’ Federation, which was a union for Japanese gardeners that also provided them with group insurance benefits. The Gardeners’ Federation was a lobbying and advocacy group in addition to being a labor and social organization.
My great grandmother, Tsuya Kanazashi Ozawa, was the first in the family to convert from Buddhism/Shinto to Christianity, joining Christ Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, another pilar of support and activity in the community. This church was also not exclusively Japanese American and it remains a cornerstone of the community today.
As my grandmother Doris cooked and cleaned all day for the boarding house, she did so after serving as a nutritionist in the Heart Mountain hospital for the entire camp, which was estimated at 10,767 people at peak during World War II.
Doris (Noda) Ozawa graduating nursing school, in Hawai’i, before moving to the mainland (California)
Heart Mountain, Food Services
I believe my family are people who deserve to be recognized as historically significant, as everyone who was part of this community merits remembrance and recognition for their spirit and contributions.
My family’s story and their properties tell the story of this community and Los Angeles history, as it developed on the backs of multiracial networks of solidarity and interdependence. The story behind these properties is that of a vibrant community that was ethnically and cultural distinct and rich but also part of a larger diverse community, stronger together than divided.
Ozawa family photo (1952). Front row (from left) Daniel Ozawa, Joseph Ozawa, grandfather Sukesaku Ozawa, grandmother Tsuya Ozawa, Alice Ozawa, and Irene Ozawa; back row (from left) Doris Ozawa with infant Allen Ozawa, Joe Naoshi Ozawa Sr., Koichi Mano, George Ozawa, Betty Ozawa, Shizuka Ozawa with infant Edith Ozawa
I hope this story is told and remembered this way. It is a story about service, love, integrity, and solidarity. It’s about never forgetting your neighbors, standing with them, and rising together, crying together, building, and rebuilding together.
This resilience comes from the spirit of gaman through the hardship and carries forward. The definition of gaman from Wikipedia is “a Japanese term of Zen Buddhist origin which means “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity”. The fruits of gaman are on the other side of suffering. When the pain is too hard to bear, there is gaman of the individual, but for Buddhists and Christians alike, there is the collective whole that perseveres, that carries you like a tightly knit crowd. You need only lift your legs and the body of the crowd will carry you forward. This is how we survive the unthinkable, all of us. We walk in faith when our faith fails us and when our faith and our legs fail us, we are carried by the walk of our community.
It's not the moments of indignity, the physical pain, the injustice, the labor and exploitation, what cuts the deepest and gives rise to unforgiveness, a hardening of the heart, is the suffering in our children. What do we tell them? They do not understand institutions, wars, borders, Executive Orders and Congress. They only want to know if people are good or bad, if they are safe and how to be safe. Easing their suffering makes us continue. We take our words from our mouths to them – “the world is not a bad place, people are not evil or bad, a few small number of people do not care if they hurt people and some institutions do not care if they hurt people and can be dangerous, but we can also change institutions” – we take these words and we make them true by acting as if they are true. We bring our children beauty, generosity, support, care, song, storytelling, games and play, art and apprenticeship, to surround them with the salve they need for their wounded, fearful hearts. Through gaman we heal our fearful and wounded hearts too, surrounded by purpose, organization, collective effort, and encouragement in others’ courage to get up day after day to face hardship.
Ansel Adams, Pool in Pleasure Park, Manzanar, 1943, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. Japanese gardens created by incarcerated prisoners
When I worked in the Philippines I remember after a typhoon hit, watching the men survey the damage to the community. They moved, house by house, collecting the wreckage from the beaches, salvaging what could be saved, repairing, and re-enforcing the building frames, carrying them on their shoulders to higher ground. They literally picked up the pieces of their shattered lives and rebuilt as a community, house by house. That’s called bayanihan; an ancient practice. That’s what this is also story about. Not about my family or even Japanese Americans or of an ethnic enclave in Los Angeles, California, but that spirit, the bayanihan spirit of rebuilding together, after gaman.
While still in the throes of gaman, we know there is an end to the suffering. There is a marching straight through, the fastest route, slow and steady through it, to the other side. The acute suffering is not forever. Once we arrive on the other side of suffering, we remember the love, the friendship, the comradery, the bravery, the valiance, the courage is within us and our community and we know, finally, in fact, that we will survive anything, as long as we walk together.
Supportive Action
If you’d like to support the candidacy of this historical designation, Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell has still not voiced his support for the nominations. Please call his main City Hall line at (213) 473-7013 so that he knows how many people are watching this nomination.
Here is a simple script:
"Hi, I'm (name) calling from (LA, or specify if you live in CD 13) urging the Councilmember to support the Ozawa and Joyce Boarding House Historic-Cultural Monument nominations. Can I count on the Councilmember's support for the nominations at the rescheduled PLUM hearing?"
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