The family behind the San Gabriel Nursery endured incarceration, a fire and other setbacks. They are celebrating their 100th anniversary this year.
Seeking new opportunities, Fred Yoshimura left his home in Yamaguchi, Japan, for California in 1917. There was no family to greet him when he arrived. He was 21.
“I can still hear their voices,” their granddaughter Mary Ishihara Swanton, 55, said. “They never leave you. They’re always there.” For years, Yoshihashi greeted customers and oversaw the flower shop. And she continued to call Ishihara after she retired to remind him to turn off the coffee maker at the end of the day.
By the 1930s, the family had solidified their reputation as pillars of the community, Swanton said, as her grandfather worked to foster a better understanding of Japanese and American cultures. Tensions boiled over after Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor and launched the U.S. into World War II. The day after the attack, Fred Yoshimura was picked up by federal agents, interrogated and detained for several months, Swanton said.
While Fred Yoshimura was missing, Mituko Yoshimura continued to run the nursery, but the U.S. government notified her the family would be relocated to a wartime prison camp, Swanton said. The Yoshimura family was eventually relocated and incarcerated at a prison camp on an Indian reservation in Gila River, Ariz.
It took years for the nursery to rebuild its stock of flowers, trees and plants. Fred Yoshimura and his sons again started to build up their clippings from landscaping. He also planted pansies, Swanton said, which grew fast and quickly helped bring in some money. By 1957, the nursery began to host foreign exchange students from Japan. That was when Saburo Ishihara, Swanton’s father, first arrived in California.
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