When one thinks of San Pedro or Terminal Island, most people are unaware that there once lived a thriving Japanese fishing village there. Unique in fact, the Islanders had their own accent. But sadly, the peaceful village that had been settled by people of Wakayama Prefecture. The population numbered around 3000 Nisei, Sansei, and some original Isei was forcibly evacuated February 1942 following the outbreak of war with Japan. None of it's original structures remain most notably it's small Shinto Shrine. In honoring the ten year anniversary of the erection of the Terminal Island Memorial featuring two Japanese Fishermen at work in the shadow of a Shinto Tori Gate, we at American Mishima chose to feature some recently re-discovered photos of the last days of the Shrine and attach the following video that speaks of both the Village and the Documentary Furusato: The Lost Village of Terminal Island.
And next comes the two sad photos no Shinto Guji or Practitioner would ever want to endure.
Though lost to the cruelties of history, not forgotten in our hearts.
“American Mishima” is the work of Louis Rosas, the son of Mexican Immigrants, whose father served in Vietnam for the US Army and who grew up on glamorized war films and military aviation in the sleepy seaside plains of Oxnard, Calif. With an early fascination of the Second World War embedded in his young mind during the post-Vietnam era, it was his exposure to Akira Kurosawa's samurai epic Ran (Toho, 1985) that changed his views of war while creating a lasting impression of Japanese culture and history. Further inspired by the works of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, Rosas would go on to study Japanese language and swordsmanship, which led him to the practice of Shingon Buddhism and Shinto. Rosas is also a former student of Shinkendo, the ideal and practice of the samurai code of Bushido in the modern world, which helped shape the creative force that is “American Mishima.”
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