Looking for something to do to make the weekend complete, Keri booked us on a tour of the Wakamatsu Farm, a unique and historically significant site. It was here that the very first Japanese immigrants settled.

Located just two miles from Coloma and despite the area being inhabited for thousands of years, it's a two-year period between 1869 and 1871 that made a huge impact on California's demographics and agriculture.
During our rain soaked walking tour, we learned that shortly after the American Civil War, Japan had their own, The Boshin War. In 1869, a group of 22 samurai and their families came to San Francisco and eventually found their way to the Gold Hill region. There, with the help of a benefactor, John Henry Schnell (a foreign-born samurai and arms dealer to the last Shogun), the Japanese purchased the land from the previous owner Graner (who had homesteaded it) and established the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony.

Unfortunately for the Japanese, their agricultural experiment ultimately failed. By 1871, most of the Japanese settlers dispersed and the property was bought by the Veerkamp family. For over 125 years the Veerkamps farmed the land, grazed cattle and operated a family dairy. From the beginning, they worked to preserve the remnants of the Japanese Colony.
When the colony colapsed, a young Japanese woman named Okei, who had come with Schnell as a nanny, remained as a caretaker for the Veerkamps. Unfortunately, her stay would be short-lived. At the age of 17, Okei succumbed to an illness and died on the property. Today, her gravesite is visited by school children and Japanese tourists, paying their respects to a young woman who left her family and home to start a new life in California.



After touring the farm, we were brought indoors to learn more about life here. The farmhouse, which was built in 1854 and housed many of the Japanese immigrants, was a window into the lives of the various occupants. 

State historian, Kenneth Starr, said of this farm, "The culture they brought with them across the vast Pacific was destined, over time, to become not only a way of life for Japanese-Americans but a paradigm, a model, an example of reverence for the land, social cooperation, the struggle for community, and the challenges related to the blending of cultures that would turn out to be, each of them, so important to the past, present, and future of the nation-state called California."
Located less than 70 miles from Tahoe, this historical place tells a story that needs to be heard. And I'm so glad we were there to listen.