Healing the Wounds of War

Sierra Madre School’s Garden of Goodwill Offers Hope Amid Rapidly Changing World

By Terry Miller

As Sierra Madre School celebrates the 81st Anniversary of the Japanese Goodwill Garden at Sierra Madre Elementary School, a reunion of sorts, was held Saturday at the school with some of the key individuals who made the Garden of Goodwill what it is today, and help keep it that way. A dutiful location of peace, solitude and refection.
Issei fathers of the two dozen Japanese-American children who attended the school in the 1920’s had built a small garden at the elementary school as a gesture of good will to celebrate the completion of a new school building in 1930. Then, it had a very small fish pond, a bridge, a bonsai pine tree as well as a stone lantern., according to an article published in The LA Times in the early 1990’s.
The rediscovery of the Japanese garden (circa 1993-94) and how the students got into restoring the lost treasure that was destroyed as a result of bigotry and hatred of Japanese Americans during the post Pearl Harbor days, was brought to life through teacher Helen Pontarelli who hopes the garden will continue to be an unexpected, emergent curriculum at the school.
While the stories vary on the amount of vandalism and the conjecture about anti-Japanese sentiment at that point in history, the fact remains that it was damaged and left unattended for many years after the war.
Enter Helen Obizowa, a former student at the school and resident of Sierra Madre, who decided it would be a good idea to resurrect the garden in 1992. Obizowa, now 92, is credited for the original concept and then approached Watanabe with her idea. Watanabe granted her wish without a moment’s hesitation.
Linda Sandoval and lots of other parent/teacher volunteers helped raise for the garden’s upkeep. And of course, her daughter Natalie was one of the first students to get the project rolling.
After posing for a few pictures, we sat down for a chat and a wonderful history lesson. Becky Bickel, Katherine Bishop, Esther Salinas ( principal), Helen Pontarelli, Ty Gaffney ( former principal ), Arturo Garcia who is Lew Watanabe’s right hand man on Watanabe’s projects, Linda Sandoval and daughter Natalie along with Lew Watanabe all had something unique to offer on Saturday.
The Garden of Goodwill would be not complete without the mild mannered and modest Lew Watanabe. Watanabe is one of those rare individuals who not only has volunteered his time, money and expertise in restoring and expanding the garden but he has helped garner community interest and keep it. Watanabe along with a little help from his friends in Sierra Madre and community support over the years but has been instrumental in promoting what he believes was “ordained by God.” Watanabe said Saturday that he truly believes this project would never have happened “had it not been for the Lord.”
The original Japanese garden built in 1931, was the effort of the parents of Japanese American students at the school. The carefully constructed and peaceful garden was then vandalized and completely destroyed by those who over-reacted to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The sixth grade class of 1995 read about this part of Sierra Madre’s history and discovered an article in the Los Angeles Times (Oct. 1994) documenting the history of what was once a garden at their school, according to Natalie Sandoval who was s student in Helen Pontarelli’s class then. Upon reading the article, Natalie and the students of Sierra Madre School decided to restore it, undertook a massive fund-raising and labor effort to do just that.
The students held car washes, bake sales, wrote letters, and sold origami cranes among other things to fund the reconstruction. They also did the physical labor, digging the bridge out of the mud and excavated the garden.
Watanabe became a central figure for the ambitious project and as a landscape gardener, he designed the new garden and led the reconstruction.
Through sales and donations, students were able to raise enough money to rebuild the garden. On Sunday, February 4, 1995, the Japanese Garden was officially dedicated. The ceremony included 17 members of the class of 1931 and their teacher. The dedication ceremony included Taiko drumming, dancing, and a karate demonstrations.

-Photo by Terry Miller

The garden was officially named – Garden of Goodwill.
Kids and parents put together a massive volunteer effort to keep the garden clean and on Veterans Day last year and studied in depth why happened to Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor – also what became of many of those who were sent to internment camps as a direct result of the military action.
Internment by the United States government in 1942 of about 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called “War Relocation Centers,” in the wake of Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally throughout the United States. Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast of the United States were all interned, while in Hawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the territory’s population, 1,200 to 1,800 Japanese Americans were interned. Of those interned, 62% were American citizens.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt(FDR) authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066, issued February 19, 1942, which allowed local military commanders to designate “military areas” as “exclusion zones,” from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and most of Oregon and Washington, except for those in internment camps. In 1988, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation said that government actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership”. The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs.
The lesson learned is that of tolerance and how prejudice can overwhelm a nation. The similarity of the anti-Muslim racism and now even more recently the growing anti-U.S. sentiment over a YouTube video that cost Ambassador J. Christopher Steven’s life, is not lost on these young minds.
Teachers such as Helen Pontarelli are helping the students realize that tolerance of our differences is critical and compromise is the only solution to such matters.
The Upper Campus Service Club ( which tends to the gardens) was started about six years ago by a parent who wanted the new middle school (still under construction) to have some of the same opportunities as established middle schools in the Pasadena Unified School district – the current project of the service club is the care and maintenance one of Sierra Madre’s true historic monuments.
What the Garden of Goodwill needs now is someone to backwash the pond once a week and ensure the pump and filters are working properly. Watanabe and Garcia will train whomever is willing to make a commitment to the Garden of Goodwill. Backwashing is critical to prevent algae growth and keep the Koi happy and heathy,
There is one additional problem the Garden of Goodwill faces periodically, a Blue Herron (Ardea herodias) who apparently goes fighting from pond to pond in the Sierra Madre area. The Herron makes a visit about once a week but luckily the Koi are too large now for the Herron to eat. “I hate that Herron,” said one of the members of the group. “ It was eating all our young Koi.”
If you can help financially or with some time to help maintain the pond with backwashing in the Garden of Goodwill, please call Esther Salinas, Principal of Sierra Madre Elementary School at Lower Campus – 141 West Highland Avenue Sierra Madre. Phone: (626) 396-5890 – Fax: (626) 355-0388.
-Photo by Terry Miller

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