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Memories on Bainbridge Island: explore quiet, contemplative green spaces a short ferry ride from seattle - Travel

Sunset, May, 2003 by Heidi A. Schuessler

On my walk around Bainbridge Gardens, I pass rows of annuals, piles of bark and soil, miles of perennials, and customers giddy with the sense of discovery. A smiling woman pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with ornamentals yells out to anyone in earshot, "I love this nursery!"

In the midst of all the bustle, it's easy to pass right by a small garden tucked into a quiet corner--unless you happen to notice a pear tree trimmed into a pear-shaped topiary or the softly bubbling pond under the shade of Japanese red pines.

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Junkoh Harui, whose father planted these trees in the nursery's early days, finds this a magical place. "If you stand and look around, you see trees that have been here 60, 70, 80 years," he says. "That's what makes the property so beautiful, and the air so sweet." Harui now runs the family business with his wife, Chris.

The nursery is just one of many visible reminders of the Japanese American presence on Bainbridge Island, a bedroom community 30 minutes by ferry from downtown Seattle. It's been almost 100 years since the issei, or first-generation Japanese Americans, moved to Bainbridge, and today there are several ways to experience their heritage.

On High School Road, for example, cherry trees bloom every spring, just as they do in Japan. On the west side of the local library, there is a neatly tended "haiku garden." Visitors can even stay in a "futon-and-breakfast," an authentic Japanese-style guest house.

Celebrated cedar

Much of the island's Japanese American legacy is visible in its gardens and parks. One afternoon I drive to the northern tip of the island to visit the 150-acre Bloedel Reserve. At the northwest side of the Japanese garden is an immense katsura tree covered with heart-shaped leaves. After passing through the small wooden torii, a Japanese-style gate, I stroll along a path built by Seattle landscape contractor Fujitaro Kubota in the 1960s and pause to sit by the pond to watch swans. I wander around the Zen rock garden in the shade of a Western red cedar and peer into the Japanese teahouse, a long rectangular building of cedar and glass. I have to content myself with a peek through the glass walls--the teahouse is used only for private meetings.

No such restraint is needed when viewing the cedar tree that inspired the love story in David Guterson's novel Snow Falling on Cedars. It stands tall in Fairy Dell Park, just north of Battle Point Park and a short drive from the Bloedel Reserve. When I finally find it after walking from the northwest corner of the park along a path that leads to the beach, I can't resist reaching out to touch it.

There's another landmark in the works on Bainbridge Island. Not far from the celebrated cedar is the site where the Eagle Harbor Ferry Landing once stood. Frank Kitamoto, president of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community, often visits this place. He was only 2 years old when his family was loaded onto a ferry here, bound for the World War II internment camp at Manzanar. (Japanese Americans on Bainbridge were the first in the United States to be taken there.) Today, Kitamoto is one of many people working to make this site part of the National Park Service system. All you can see now is a plaque in a rock formation that serves as a memorial marker, but there are plans for a $3.5 million interpretive center and expanded memorial. When it's completed, Kitamoto says he hopes the memorial will help people remember first- and second-generation Japanese Americans who lived here--and other islanders who helped their community during the war years. "It's important to honor people on the island who support ed us."

Memories on Bainbridge Island: explore quiet, contemplative green spaces a short ferry ride from seattle - Travel

Sunset, May, 2003 by Heidi A. Schuessler

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