Cliff Nakatani, 93, can see all the way across what used to be his home deep into his backyard and a wall near a squat orange tree stands, green-leafed and lush. Six small oranges hang from its branches, swinging in the breeze.
Nakatani presses one finger to his lips, surveying the rubble and ash of the home on Mountain View Street he brought his young family to 67 years ago.
“I couldn’t believe how bad it was,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
He starts to cry.
From his family’s new base in Las Vegas, Johnny Kamon, 37, a third-generation Altadenan, and his wife Akiko, remember feeling most driven to rebuild after the Eaton fire. But three months after losing their home, they’ve learned the majority of their neighbors on his block have decided or have already sold their lots, some to developers who plan to subdivide and build larger homes with ADUs on each lot.
“A large part of what my wife and I loved about our home was the beautiful community and neighbors that we would get to see daily and interact with on a regular basis,” Kamon said. “Our neighbors never felt like neighbors in the definition of the word, but more like family members that we like, that lived next door to us.”
The Kamons moved to Las Vegas to distance themselves from the trauma without being too far to regularly visit.
Johnny’s father bought the house on Mariposa Street with his parents in 1965, after the elder Kamons were released from the internment camps after World War II and their Pasadena home behind John Muir High School was taken over by eminent domain.
The Kamons were one of the many Japanese Americans who settled in the town in the 1960s, following laws that made housing discrimination based on race or ethnicity illegal, according to the Altadena Historical Society.
Award-winning author Naomi Hirahara’s parents, Sam and May, survived the 1945 atomic bombing in Hiroshima, where they married. They came to Altadena in 1960 and lived there for 11 years, enough time for the town, with it’s unique wildness and purple mountains, to make an indelible mark on their daughter’s mystery novels and nonfiction books.
Hirahara owns a copy of The Japanese Directory of Pasadena, circa 1956, which lists 126 Nikkei adults and business in Altadena that year, and about 1,600 in Pasadena.
Kamon remembers going to Webster’s Pharmacy, his dad teaching him to ride a bike at the local school field, walking to and from school at St. Mark’s, and working at Steve’s Bike Shop as a teenager.
Kamon said he does one day hope to rebuild and move back to Altadena, but he’s no longer in a rush.
“I’m focusing on having my wife live in an area she feels safe while we allow for our mental state to recover from this devastating trauma we went through and continue to on a daily basis, especially when having to deal with our homeowners insurance, the Small Business Administration and FEMA,” Kamon said.
Even before the wildfire displaced so many, there weren’t many Japanese Americans still living in Altadena, Kamon said.
There are incredible Pasadena organizations such as the Pasadena Buddhist Temple and the Pasadena Japanese Community Institute where many Japanese Americans still gather, he said, but as each generation ages, their children and grandchildren choose to live elsewhere for different reasons.
“I hope that this tragedy somehow brings more Japanese Americans back to Altadena/Pasadena, but I would think that this new opportunity for more modern and higher-end housing will be another barrier for many Japanese Americans to return back to where they or their parents previously lived,” Kamon said.
A close call
Neighbors saw smoke rising from the grounds of the Pasadena Buddhist Temple on Glen Avenue in Pasadena the morning of Jan. 8. Elliot Sloane’s home on Mentone share a fence with the temple. He and his brother-in-law Michael Murray jumped the fence and started hosing down the smoldering spots.
When temple members Alan and Lori Hatayekama arrived, they found the men on the roof of the hondo, or main hall. They saved the 77-year-old temple, said Lori Hatakeyama, one of its co-presidents.
Longtime member Shelley Yamane-Shinmoto said three days after the fires erupted, the temple sangha, or community, had mobilized a small group of volunteers to provide supplies and meals to the 10 members who lost their homes and others who were displaced. One member also lost his business in the fire.
Three groups: the temple, First Presbyterian Church Altadena, and the Pasadena Japanese Cultural Center (PJCC) combined forces to offer a wide range of help, which continues today.
Other supporters include the Japanese American Community Council (JACC), Little Tokyo Service Center, Yama Seafood in San Gabriel, and Azay Restaurant in Little Tokyo.
“Over the past three months we have provided over 2,000 meals to members and friends of the ‘triad,’” Yamane-Shinmoto said.
Aside from twice-weekly bento box lunches, and a supplies distribution, the temple is working with Keiro, a counseling service in Little Tokyo. The word means “respect for the elderly,” and the group’s mission is to improve the quality of life of older Japanese Americans and their caregivers.
Other workshops in the works will focus on scams, insurance navigation, and health risks after the fire.
Volunteer June Chin of Sierra Madre said like many other members, her connections bring an interrelationship among cultural groups, “like a Ven diagram.”
Chin is a member of the Buddhist Women’s Association and is on the board of the Pasadena Japanese Cultural Institute.
“So these are natural team-ups, and we don’t have an end date,” Chin said. “If we can provide longterm support, we will because while the fire is particularly tragic, I’m hopeful and cautiously optimistic.”
The spirit of ‘gaman’
Heather Harada, director of strategy for Keiro in Little Tokyo, visits the Pasadena temple weekly. Her great-grandparents migrated from Japan in the 1890s. Her grandfather was imprisoned during World War II in Tule Lake, near the Oregon border, in California, one of 125,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans incarcerated in what the U.S. government would later call an injustice to a community where not one was ever convicted or charged with espionage, treason, or any other act against the United States.
Harada is a Yonsei, or fourth-generation Japanese American. The second generation is called Nissei, the third-generation is Sansei, followed by Yonsei and Gosei.
“I offer them understanding and respect, just keep showing up and let them know we’re here,” she said.
Yamane-Shinmoto said some temple members refused assistance and offers for help because of “gaman,” the Japanese concept that translates to “endurance” or “perseverance through hardship.” It’s considered a virtue and a sign of maturity in Japanese culture, but also a hindrance to getting mental health support.
“They feel they should persevere, suffer through and not complain,” Yamane-Shinmoto said. “They may also feel help should be offered to others who need it more than them. Gaman is the reason many refuse mental health assistance. This is a big challenge for us. Getting Japanese Americans to acknowledge that mental wellness is a big part of recovery and to accept help in this area is very difficult. There is still a stigma and gaman is a huge part of that.”
Robert Fukumoto, 72, grew up attending temple services and remains a stalwart volunteer. He remembers his mother, Ritsu Kamoto Fukumoto, was 18 when she was interned in Tule Lake. Married there, she had a miscarriage in camp before her release. She and her husband Joe would later settle in Pasadena with their five children, living with racism and discrimination years after the war ended.
“My mother’s generation would say, ‘Gaman. You’ve got to move on,” Fukumoto said. “They taught us that.”
It’s a lesson Kelly Hokyo, 70, of Altadena, has learned well. She lost her home of 32 years in the Eaton Fire.
“As traumatizing and shocking this experience was, I still felt I had to persevere with dignity and patience,” Hokyo said. “For me, it’s embedded in my being, handed down over the generations before me. It’s not something I don’t think about but rather it’s a part of me. We must move forward because standing still is not productive or healthy. I look to the silver lining, the possibility of rebuilding a home in the location I love, but it will be a better more sustainable home with the hopes it will stand for decades to come.”
Chin said her Sansei and Yonsei peers have learned to combine the spirit of gaman with more outlets for self-care. It’s important for wildfire survivors she sees now mired in paperwork and phone calls, questions and slow-moving processes.
“I think our generation is more able to be resilient and still express ourselves and let go,” she said. “I’m always telling friends, ‘I’m here if you need to scream into a pillow, then let’s get coffee.’”
Hokyo agrees, saying the organizations her parents and grandparents helped build decades before remain steady supports for those who remain, as well as new members, many of whom are not of Japanese ancestry.
“What I’ve learned through this ordeal is to let go and let people help,” Hokyo said. “Be kind to myself and allow others to support you. And it’s okay to grieve and to take time to heal.”
For Cliff Nakatani, who was in Hawaii visiting family when the inferno devoured his home, this disaster is a searing chapter in his 93 years.
His mother Sei, who worked in a sugar plantation in Hawaii, was a widow with six children who brought her family to America. Her son served in the military during the Korean War, “the best thing that could have happened to me.” He married the Pasadena-born Sayo in 1955, and they raised their children Mark and Lori in Altadena, attending the temple mere blocks away.
Nakatani owned Warrington Auto Repair for more than 20 years, until his retirement. Sayo died on July 24, 2020 at the age of 90. She and Cliff have three grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
Their daughter Lori Magallanes of Temple City feels lucky she is retired so she and her father can now spend their days taking walks and volunteering in the community.
“We’re not in any rush to rebuild,” she said.
She has replanted a rose bush that stood in the home’s front yard in her place at Temple City. And a statue of Buddha they found sitting on top of the rubble of the home has a special place there, too.
“I admire his resilience,” Magallanes says of her father. “His whole block was decimated and he was shocked then he broke down, but he’s here. It’s so gut wrenching to see that devastation.”
For his part, Nakatani glances away from the rubble of his home to his daughter, who later leads him down the sidewalk to greet a neighbor, now living in a trailer on his ash-strewn lot.
“She helps me a lot,” Nakatani said. “Thank God I have her.”
