Aizu- Wakamatsu's Samurai Should Have Come to Indiana

 One of the channels on our local tv network is called Grit. Grit broadcasts cowboy-themed movies and tv series from the 50’s through the 90’s. I switch it on from time to time to watch familiar shows from my youth such as Bat Masterton, Tales of Wells Fargo, and spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood. The infamous whistle and wa-wa trumpet background is still there. If you don’t know the reference, then you don’t know Clint Eastwood westerns.

A regular offering on Grit is Death Valley Days, hosted by various actors including Stanley Andrews (“The Old Ranger”), future president Ronald Reagan and later by Dale Robertson, of previous Wells Fargo fame. As I watch the reruns, I notice that actors who star in one western, often show up in other series as well. Sometimes as the hero and sometimes as the villain. Or, Hollywood’s favorite, the outlaw hero, perfected by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I suppose there is a certain type casting of western stars as it would be strange to see Gunsmoke's James Arness on Gomer Pyle, or with his brother Peter Graves on Mission Impossible. 

In any event, I don’t remember being a big fan of Death Valley Days as a boy. For some odd reason, I found space exploration and missions to the moon more exciting than 20 Mule Team Borax laundry soap commercials which was Valley’s sponsor and opening scene intro. Can you imagine taking care of twenty mules and driving them through the Nevada desert? No thank you.

Youthful dreams of space travel aside, I turned on my trusty Grit the other morning while making coffee (which consists of pressing the button on my Nespresso machine) and host Dale, caught my attention with the story of the first Japanese settlement in America started by a group of samurai from Aizu-Wakamatsu (now Fukushima Prefecture) fleeing the collapse of the Shogun government in Japan and thus out of work and on the run. Interesting. First time I had seen a Japanese-themed western since Charles Bronson got tossed around by Toshiro Mifune in Red Sun.

 “The Dragon of Golden Hill,” episode 15 from season 18 of Death Valley, recounts the short-lived history of the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony near Placerville, California. It started in 1869 with the intention of growing tea bushes and mulberry trees. Tea for market in San Franscisco and mulberry trees as food for the silkworms. Unfortunately, the samurai colonists ran into a lengthy drought in an area known for drought and the withdrawing of promised funding from Japan. Despite importing fifty-thousand mulberry trees, all withered and died thus leading to the closing of the colony in 1871. Some of the samurai returned to Japan, while others stayed in America working for the new landowners or drifting to new opportunities. One of the original colonists was a 17-year-old Japanese girl named Ito Okei. She came as a maid then stayed to work for the Veerkamp family that bought the land after the colony folded. Unfortunately, she died of a fever at age 19 and is recognized as the first Japanese woman to be buried in America. Her grave is still on the original land and the colony was proclaimed a California Historical Landmark in 1969 by then Governor Ronald Reagan. Figured there had to be a connection somewhere.

Meanwhile back at the Wakamatsu ranch, our episode begins with expat samurai Matsu and Okei, the 16-year-old maid, forced to make the long trip to town on foot to check for funds from Japan because they have sold the wagon to keep the colony afloat. Matsu, played by Soon-Taik Oh, looked familiar and upon further investigation saw that he appeared on the series MASH and Kung-Fu, while Okei played by Momo Yashima, appeared on Star Trek. Meanwhile, cowboy villain Daniel Turner, played by William Smith also appeared on Kung-Fu. So much for my western genre typecasting theory. I guess once you start doing tv westerns, space dramas and Korean War sitcoms is an easy transition.

When Matsu and Okei finally get to town, a group of rowdy cowboys accuse Matsu and the colonists of causing the fever going around and the cowpokes get pushy until the local sheriff and more understanding locals step in. Later, the bad hombres show up at the colony and start tearing down tents and destroy a Buddhist alter. Matsu, who has seen enough, takes on the offenders and plants a couple of nice kicks and elbow strikes plus a Seionage judo throw to the rowdies. That gets the cowboys attention and when things are finally sorted out, everyone shakes hands, and the good old boys ride off. Matsu, with Okei’s encouragement, decides to stay in America and make another go of it. The scene fades and host Dale returns to tell of Okei’s death due to fever shortly thereafter and the eventual closing of the colony. Unfortunately, Gold Hill, California, wasn’t the place to grow mulberry trees, at least not in 1869. Now if the Samurai had come to Indiana, things would have been different.

As the show credits run, I look out my kitchen window—painstakingly brewed double espresso in hand— and my view is obscured by the branches of a pernicious mulberry tree that won’t take no for an answer. As if to show me who really owns the land my house sits on, said tree grows faster than I can fire up my Swiss-made espresso coffee computer. The tree, along with his mulberry cousins, are found in every nook and cranny around the yard, along neighborhood sidewalks, in the nature preserve next door, and in the movie theatre parking lot around the corner. The damn trees are everywhere and good luck trying to pull the roots out or cut them down. Needless to say, I never planted one the interlopers.

Considered an invasive species in many communities due to the high pollen content of the male trees. (Why is it always the man's fault!) Mulberries are everywhere in Central Indiana, and I do mean everywhere. A game I play during evening walks is to count how many new mulberry trees I see pushing through cracks in someone's driveway, fence line, or any other spot that doesn't have 2 feet of concrete or asphalt over it. I might live in Shiloh Farms, but it could be more accurately named Mulberry Hell. 

So, if the Aizu Samurai had come to my neighborhood, things would definitely been different. If French nuns can open Saint Mary of the Woods women's college in the wilderness of Terre Haute, Indiana in 1840, and Kwai Chang Cain could "Walking the Earth" of the old west with no dough or shoes, then Japanese Samurai could certainly have made it to the Crossroads of America. They could have had all the mulberry trees they wanted and could have sold their silk and tea at the Chicago Merchandise Mart just up the road. Who knows, their descendants might have become IU basketball, or IndyCar fans. It all would have worked out if only the samurai would have become Hoosiers.