Maybe Once In A Lifetime Chance

I've started a new project with my friend Kam Jacoby. It will be similar to Layers, his book about Lompoc, for which he created remarkable photographic composites and I wrote the accompanying text. Our focus this time will be Guadalupe, a small California city in northwestern Santa Barbara County, just a few miles from Santa Maria, and the more we delve into it, the more fascinating history we unearth.

Incorporated in 1946 from an 1840 Mexican land grant (and prior to that inhabited by the native Chumash people) Guadalupe is a place where European, Chinese, Filipino, Swiss-Italian, Japanese, Mexican, Portuguese, and Spanish cultures converged. Its story is an epic American tale of hardship and opportunity, intolerance and diversity, changing tides and ultimately a scrappy kind of resilience. We'll be hunting for photographs and stories...in fact, if you happen to know of anyone with Guadalupe roots and a trove of old local photos, we'd sure be interested.

Speaking of resilience, we had the honor of meeting Mr. Harry Masatani, one of Guadalupe's esteemed citizens who with his wife and sons still runs Masatani's Market on Guadalupe Street, and who welcomed us into his home as though we were old friends. Mr. Masatani ("Call me Harry") was born in Santa Maria in 1926 to a Japanese immigrant father, and a mother who'd been born to Japanese parents in Honolulu. Harry spent his childhood right here in Guadalupe...until one day in 1941, everything suddenly changed.

In his words:

"Wartime. Japanese. You know what happened to us? I got locked up. On December 6, we are Japanese Americans...you know? December 8, we are classified as enemy aliens. The very next day after December 7, we’re enemy aliens…huh? How 'bout that? Not Americans anymore. FBI came and picked up all the heads of the household, all the men, so just the women and children are left. And shortly after that came the order to evacuate the West coast. So they rounded us up."

He was sitting on a sofa in the parlor of his house, telling sad stories without a trace of bitterness. Behind him was a red and white blanket adorned with a banner: City of Guadalupe, Est. 1840, Inc. 1946 and three illustrated highlights: the jail house, the city hall, and the fire department.

"That old man you saw sitting there at the desk today [at the American Legion Hall], he was in the army then, and when the army came to round up the Japanese, he was one of the guards. Can you believe that? Now we’re like brothers...we’re like brothers."

I'm still in the process of transcribing the stories Harry told us, and I'll tell you more another time...stories of hard work, service to country, forgiveness and friendship, a bullet through a window in a wallpapered room, enduring ties to community. Suffice it to say he is someone who could have remained angry but is kind and generous instead. He's a man with a twinkle in his eye, someone with the sort of wisdom that includes a sense of humor. It was memorable and humbling to talk to him.

He taught me a little lesson, too. He led Kam and me up two flights of stairs to the attic of his old Victorian house, then pointed to a narrow doorway which opened onto a ladder to an opening in the roof. From there, you lift yourself to get onto the widow's walk overlooking Guadalupe, visibility way out to the dunes.

Kam of course went up the ladder without hesitation, slid open the hatch, and emerged out onto the roof. I started up and then got scared...to be honest, I'm just leery of heights...and I was already worrying about getting back down afterwards, trying to picture how I'd lower myself through the opening and backwards down the ladder.

Yes, I realize I was over-thinking it, but I was just afraid, so I simply gave up and stepped back down into the attic where Harry was waiting for us.

He wouldn't let me get away with giving up.

"Maybe once in a lifetime chance," he said. "You'll be happier if you go up there."

And of course he was right.