8 minute read
BEACH AND BAY
Aquatic superhero
EELGRASS INSTRUMENTAL IN REDUCING CARBON EMISSIONS
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NEIL MATTHEWS Stingrays prefer habitats with sandy or muddy bottoms and eelgrass. This round ray was photographed in Glorietta Bay.
BY AMY STEWARD
Anyone who has launched a paddle craft around Coronado has come across the icky squishiness of eelgrass seeping between the toes. Yuck!
While it may seem nasty to wade through, eelgrass is one of the most important plants in the ocean.
Eelgrass is a perennial seagrass that is extremely valuable to the San Diego Bay’s ecosystem. Not only does it produce oxygen, but eelgrass also improves water quality by acting as a filter for pollution. And it provides food for marine life such as turtles and waterfowl as well as shelters for juvenile fish and invertebrates.
The grass also stabilizes the water’s substrate, which is the dirt, rock and sand at the bottom of the ocean or bay, and reduces wave energy that causes coastal erosion. Its extensive root system is key to keeping shoreline sediments from eroding away, and it’s a natural buffer against coastal storms.
And that’s just the beginning. The often-bemoaned plant is a superhero when it comes to climate change.
Eelgrass is a “carbon sink,” meaning it sequesters and stores gases such as carbon and methane that contribute to climate change in its root system and soil. According to researchers, an acre of eelgrass can absorb 30 to 50 times more carbon than an acre of forest. Research also suggests that the sequestration of carbon by eelgrass helps curb the effects of ocean acidification, which is damaging to crabs, oysters and other shellfish.
Many are unaware of the importance of eelgrass, which has led to the degradation of plant beds due to dredging, pollution, urban development and runoff. Globally, we lose the equivalent of two football fields of eelgrass an hour. According to the Pew Charitable Trust, approximately 30 percent of the world’s seagrass have vanished since the 1870s.
However, eelgrass is now protected by federal law. In 1996, the U.S. government designated eelgrass an essential fish habitat and a Habitat of Particular Concern. The state of California is working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries to mitigate unavoidable impacts and develop strategies to replace eelgrass habitat.
In 2020, the San Diego Unified Port District surveyed San Diego Bay and found 26,000 acres of eelgrass. This represents half of all eelgrass in Southern California. This past summer, the Port District received $150,000 from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration to study carbon sequestration in San Diego Bay and its impact on air quality.
So the next time eelgrass squishes between your toes, remember it is key in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. ■
Amy Steward is president of Emerald Keepers.
Digging deep
MARTINA SCHIMITSCHEK
‘Uprooted’ looks at Japanese American life and culture in Coronado
By MARTINA SCHIMITSCHEK
In fall 1941, Akira Takeshita was just a teenager attending Coronado High School. By February 1942, he was considered a threat to national security.
He and all Coronado residents of Japanese descent were rounded up and incarcerated in Poston, Arizona, as part of executive order 9066 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which interned Japanese residents on the West Coast in remote camps for the duration of the war.
Yet despite that, Takeshita enlisted in the U.S. Army, joining the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated division that became one of the most decorated units of World War II.
Takeshita’s story is part of “Uprooted: The Story of Japanese
Americans in Coronado,” the Coronado Historical Association’s recently installed exhibition of the history of Japanese
Americans on the island.
The idea for the exhibition was sparked in part by the many archived photos of the long-removed Japanese tea gardens in Coronado, said Christine Stokes, executive director of the
Coronado Historical Association.
“My first big surprise when I moved here was that there was a tea garden here,” Stokes said.
“Uprooted” is the result of extensive research into the
Japanese families that settled in Coronado. It was created in collaboration with the Japanese American Historical Society
Left: A kimono is on display at the entrance of “Uprooted,” the Coronado Historical Association’s exhibition on Japanese Americans on the island. Previous pages: An undated photo of the Japanese Tea Garden on the corner of Ynez Place and Adella Avenue.
CORONADO HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION COLLECTION
CORONADO HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION COLLECTION
George Marsh’s second Japanese Garden was in operation until 1936. The Coronado Historical Assocation exhibition includes photos, a blueprint of the grounds and an inventory list when it was dismantled.
CHRISTINE STOKES EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CORONADO HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
of San Diego and the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park.
“We can’t tell the story of the gardens without telling the Japanese American story. We wanted to give context, highlight people in the community,” she said. “Many years ago, we did oral histories in conjunction with the Japanese American Historical Society.”
Takeshita, who died in 2019, is among the people interviewed for those oral histories.
“Uprooted,” which opened in November, focuses on the gardens, the Japanese community before World War II and the Army’s 442nd but also touches on what happened after the war, including the 1980 Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, which investigated the incarceration of Japanese Americans.
In the mid-1800s, Japan, which had been largely isolated for centuries, opened its ports to the United States. The trade of goods introduced Japan to Western culture and sparked a rapid modernization of the country. The resulting upheaval caused some to seek work elsewhere, and by 1868, Hawaii recorded the first known Japanese sugar plantation workers.
In 1887, Kohei Tanaka came to Coronado to manufacture charcoal for the plant that powered the Hotel Del Coronado and the surrounding community. He was the town’s first Japanese immigrant.
For wealthy Westerners, the opening of Japanese trade launched a fascination with the country’s culture and arts. Soon tea gardens were part of world fairs and expositions. George Marsh, an importer of Japanese goods, started to build gardens to help market his wares.
At the turn of the 20th century, he was commissioned by John Spreckels, owner of the Hotel Del Coronado, to establish a Japanese tea garden in Coronado to attract visitors to the hotel and the Coronado Beach Co. The garden was built at the end of Ocean Boulevard, in the vicinity of today’s Sunset Park. Materials were imported from San Francisco and Japan, and Japanese laborers constructed the site.
The garden, which officially opened Sept. 15, 1902, included tea service, a gift shop and imported plants, including a cherry tree, as well as animals, such as the mandarin duck. But less than three years after it opened, the garden was hit with a series of severe storms in early 1905, which washed out Ocean Boulevard.
The infrastructure that remained of the tea garden was relocated closer to the Hotel Del on land by Ynez Place and Adella Avenue, and a new garden was erected. It included a small Inari shrine
CORONADO HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION COLLECTION. A Japanese family stands in front of the wisteria trellis at the second Japanese tea garden in this undated photo.
with a torii gate, tea arbors, bridges, a lake and a main house.
The exhibition includes photos, a blueprint of the grounds and an inventory list when it was dismantled in 1936. “It puts everything into context,” Stokes said of the display. “That’s so special. Stuff like this gets lost sometimes.”
By the time the second garden closed, both Spreckels and Marsh had died, and the land was owned by Ira Copley, a wealthy publisher and politician. The garden was no longer well maintained and anti-Japanese sentiment was growing.
By then, Coronado had an ingrained Japanese population, many working as gardeners and in the laundry business. The Japanese men who had first arrived arranged marriages from their homeland and families soon sprung up. Coronado High School had 30 graduates of Japanese descent before World War II, said Vickie Stone, the historical association’s curator of collections.
“This is very much a time when you were Japanese and American,” Stokes said.
Children attended local schools, played baseball and joined the Scouts. But Japanese families also had community gatherings — beach picnics were a favorite — with traditional food and sports.
“There were so many families here, they really developed their own community,” Stone said.
When the Japanese were released from internment camps in 1945, the adults of Poston were given a bus ticket and $25. Most had lost their homes and had nothing to return to. Some families moved to Los Angeles; others returned to Japan.
CORONADO HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION COLLECTION.
Japanese workers in the garden included attendants, who helped maintain the garden and served tea. This photo was taken in 1912.
Only two families are known to have resettled in Coronado.
Anti-Japanese sentiment was still strong and redress for lost property was a mere $2,500 through the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act of 1948. But life for Japanese American children in Coronado had some semblance of normalcy. Photos taken in the late 1940s and 1950s show kids riding bikes, playing baseball and taking part in a marble tournament.
But, Stokes said, “The story doesn’t just end here.”
Programming with “Uprooted” will include conversations with current Japanese American community members, talks about Japanese-style gardens and a showing of the 1919 film “The Dragon Painter,” starring Sessue Hayakawa, which was shot in the Coronado tea garden. ■
What: ‘Uprooted: The Story of Japanese Americans in Coronado’ Where: Coronado Historical Association, 1100 Orange Ave. When: through May 2022 Hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday through Thursday Admission: free Information: (619) 435-7242 or coronadohistory.org
