George Haruyoshi Ishihara

George Haruyoshi Ishihara / February 22, 1921 - March 17, 2009

Ishihara Park is named in honor of Mr. George Haruyoshi Ishihara, a resident of Santa Monica’s Pico Neighborhood from 1958 to 2009. Mr. Ishihara was a Japanese-American raised in Washington and Northern California.

During World War II, Mr. Ishihara enlisted in the United States Army and served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

He was a member of the 552nd Field Artillery Battalion that liberated Jewish people held captive at the Dachau Germany Internment Camp and other surrounding camps.

During this same time, Mr. Ishihara’s family was separated and interned at two relocation camps in the United States due to their Japanese heritage.

Given his enlistment in the US Army, Mr. Ishihara was able to negotiate the reunion of his family at the Minidoka Relocation Camp where they stayed until their release on September 25, 1945.

Mr. Ishihara moved to Santa Monica in 1958 where he and his wife, Chizuko, raised two children.

He was well-regarded by neighbors and served the local community through volunteer work and involvement in the Santa Monica Gardeners Association and the Japanese American Museum.

In 2009, Mr. Ishihara passed away in Santa Monica at the age of 88. In memoriam.

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remembering Chiune Sugihara

This statue can be found in Little Tokyo at the corner of South Central Avenue and East Second Street. Chiune Sugihara was born on January First Nineteen Hundred and died on July Thirty-First Nineteen Eighty-Six. Sugihara is honored here for issuing paperwork that allowed more than six thousand Jewish Lithuanians to avoid Nazi concentration and death camps in World War Two. During an entire month near the end of Nineteen Forty, and despite being repeatedly denied permission by the Japanese government to do so, Sugihara and his wife Yukiko hand-wrote at least two thousand one hundred and forty visas that allowed Jewish families to leave Lithuania and travel through Russia to relative safety in Japan. In Nineteen Forty-Four, Sugihara and his family were arrested by the victorious Soviet Army and held captive for three years. The year before his passing, he was named “Righteous Among the Nations” by the State of Israel at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remeberance Authority. He is the only Japanese national to have received the title. In memoriam.

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vlog10Jun2019

[The placard read aloud in this video is located in UCLA’s Mildred E. Mathias Botanical garden, by the lower turtle pond:]

metasequoia glyptostroboides (dawn redwood)

Long thought to be extinct, dawn redwoods were discovered in the 1940s living in remote forests in western China. Together with the coast redwood and giant sequoia, dawn redwood forms the famous third sequoia. Fossil records dating back 100 million years to the Mesozoic show that dawn redwoods were widespread across North America until about 15 million years ago. Dawn redwood remains rare and endangered today, with only a few hundred trees known in its native range. In contrast to coast redwood with alternately displayed needles, those of dawn redwood are opposite. Unlike most conifers, dawn redwood loses its leaves in winter.

Andrea, your spirit of love, kindness, and adventure will live on in our hearts and minds.

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haiku3June2019

I need to speak less.

Every time my mouth opens

It causes trouble.

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haiku31May2019

My rage is a sea

That drowns and suffocates all;

I know not its end.

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haiku29May2019

Strong hot winds crackle

Through searing desert landscapes

Making dry all wet

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haiku27May2019

Here’s to 42

When all answers are questioned

And downsides turn up

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