Carved In Stone

Since 1901, Japanese Cemetery in Colma, California, has occupied a pivotal place in the San Francisco Bay Area’s Japanese American community. It represents a transnational bridge between Japan and the United States that goes back even further, to when the first Japanese ship made its way to the region in 1860 and soon after arrival sought ground to bury three sailors lost to illness.

The Japanese ship Kanrin Maru, dispatched by the Tokugawa shogunate government to carry the first Japanese embassy to San Francisco, crossed the Pacific in 1860. Most of its crew suffered from illness over the 37-day voyage and those with severe cases were transferred to the Marine Hospital upon arrival on March 17, 1860. Two of those men succumbed a few days later and a third in May, and all were buried nearby. Their graves were among those that establish the first Japanese cemetery in the San Francisco area, at the public cemetery of Laurel Hill.

Soon after, the Masonic Cemetery was added to accommodate burials in the Bay Area, including those of Japanese. However, when San Francisco banned burials within the city limits in 1901, the Japanese Benevolent Society of California (Kashū Nihonjin Jikeikai) responded by establishing Japanese Cemetery at 1300 Hillside Boulevard in Colma. The Japanese community raised funds to purchase the land, and the cemetery opened on March 17, 1902, as a multireligious space officiated by Kakuryo Nishijima of the Buddhist Church.^[1]

The cemetery was purportedly the only burial ground for individuals of Japanese ancestry in the mainland United States at the time, according to Kasumi Shin, then the chair of the Benevolent Society, in 1989.^[2] The remains and tombstones of the Kanrin Maru sailors—the oldest graves present at the site—were moved to the cemetery in Colma around 1926.

The original two-acre cemetery, before its expansion after 1995, contained 2,000 gravesites and 5,000 remains. It transcended religious boundaries, serving as a resting place for Buddhists, Christians, Shintoists, and others.

Among Japanese Cemetery’s notable memorials and graves are the war memorials for Japanese American soldiers who served in the US Army from World War II to the Vietnam War. Others honor Kyutaro Abiko (1865–1936), founder of the Nichi Bei newspaper; George Shima (Kinji Ushijima, 1865–1926), known as the “Potato King” for his dominant position in California's potato production; and Makoto Hagiwara (1854–1925), founder of the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.

For those seeking a deeper understanding of Japanese American history, the cemetery offers lesser-known yet equally compelling narratives. Tsunejiro Yorozuya (萬屋常二郎), the first Japanese study-abroad student in the United States, died in 1870, at just 21 years old.^[3] His is one of the earliest graves.

The cultural richness of early Japanese life in America is also reflected in the grave of Senpachi Toyosawa (real name Miki Shukichi), a bunraku puppet theater gidayū narrator. He died, age 41, on July 12, 1902, and was buried here by his disciple Takichi Ogawa.

The humble tombstone of Nobusaburo Tachii (立井信三郎, March 2, 1871–December 15, 1903), often alternatively translated as Shinsaburo Tachii, marks a particularly poignant story. Tachii was a newspaper reporter for Shin Sekai who rescued the young Waka Asaba (1879–1957) from forced prostitution in Seattle in 1900. When Tachii died in 1903, Asaba erected this grave for him.

Waka Asaba later married Kakichi Yamada, a lay scholar teaching English in San Francisco. The couple returned to Japan in 1906, and Waka (Asaba) Yamada became a well known activist and critic in support of women's rights. She later courageously came back to the United States to give lectures to Japanese Americans and was invited to the White House by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1937. The following year she opened the first shelter for women and children fleeing abusive homes in Japan.^[4][5][6][7]