Uncovering hidden family history

Healing from wounds of Japanese internment

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Over the years since Alan Iglitzin, violist and founding member of the Philadelphia String Quartet, held his very first classical music festival at his farm in Quilcene, music lovers near and far have gathered for warm summer nights of easy listening.

Sitting on the grass outside or resting on hay bales in the famous barn as quartet music floats through the air, these concerts in the barn quickly became known as one of Jefferson County’s best summer activities.

But what is less well known is the long, and at times tragic, history of the farm now called Trillium Woods Farm, where the Olympic Music Festival had its start.

When Iglitzin first bought the property on Highway 19, it was run-down, with buildings falling apart and inundated with blackberries.

Clearing out the milking stalls of the dairy barn, Iglitzin found the barn to be the perfect place for classical musicians from around the country to come and play. In 1984, the Olympic Music Festival began.

But while Iglitzin loved his property and the musical life he had built there, he soon learned about the farm’s darker history.

One day, he got a call out of the blue from a Seattle woman named Iwako Iseri. Her husband, Sam (Isamu) Iseri, had grown up on the farm and she was hoping they could come and visit the property that had once belonged to Sam’s family, but had been lost during the Japanese internment.

“The conversation about the farm and the war was very little when I was growing up,” said Bill Iseri, Sam’s son. “That generation, who had been through the internment camps and through the war, were quietly strong.”

THE ISERI FAMILY

The Iseri family were Japanese immigrants who had come to Jefferson County and bought the property in 1913. There they built the barn (called the milking parlor) the farmhouse, and several other buildings on the property where they raised cows for dairy and grew berries.

Sam grew up on the property, working on the farm while he and his siblings attended Chimacum High School for a period of time.

Then, World War II came and with it President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, which authorized the internment of Japanese Americans.

“When the war broke out and the property was taken away, they were told only to take what you can carry,” Bill Iseri said. “My family was held at the Puyallup Fairgrounds, then transferred to Tule Lake, and remained there for some time.”

The Tule Lake Relocation Center, in California just south of the Oregon border held as many as 18,000 people in 1944, according to the Japanese American National Museum website.

“My dad was 27 years old when the farm was taken,” Bill Iseri said. “He had grown up there, the farm was his whole life.”

At that age, Sam was eligible to be drafted into service. But he was what was known then as one of the “no-no boys” - young men who answered “no” to the “loyalty questions” on the application for leave clearance form. They were thought to be disloyal.

Sam wasn’t disloyal, said Bill Iseri. But he was upset that his family’s land and work had been disrupted in such a way.

POST WAR

After the war, Sam’s parents decided to go back to Japan.

“But my dad was born and raised in America,” Iseri said. “He was American. So he had to make a decision of whether to be with his parents and his family in Japan, or to stay in the United States.”

Ultimately, Sam decided to go back to Japan with his family. That is where he met his wife Iwako, and where he worked for 10 years to be able to bring his wife and his parents back to the United States in 1958.

“All they had was $60,” Iseri said. “Somehow he was able to restart his life here.”

Sam and Iwako raised their family in Beacon Hill, Seattle. That is where Bill grew up, not knowing much about his family’s former farm, until his dad decided to show him the place he had grown up.

“I’m a city boy; born and raised in Seattle,” Iseri said. “So we drive out there and end up on a little dirt road by a gate. My dad stopped the truck and said, ‘We’re here.’ I said, ‘Where?’ He explained that this was the farm where he was born and raised.”

But at that time, the owner of the farm was not welcoming visitors.

“My dad just said, ‘Sorry to bother you.’ We got back in the car and he said, ‘We’re never coming back here,’” Iseri said.

It wasn’t until much later in Sam’s life when his wife, Iwako, convinced him to try going back to the farm one more time. Iglitzin said Iwako had read about the Olympic Music Festival in the news and had convinced Sam to go see if the new owner of the farm would be more welcoming.

“They parked by the same gate, and here comes another guy,” Iseri said. “That guy was Alan.”

Iglitzin had known about the Iseri family from old artifacts he had found on the property, including a receipt for a basketball that Sam had bought, which had his name on it.

“So when my dad said, ‘I’m Sam Iseri,’ a lightbulb went off in Alan’s head,” Iseri said. “And my dad started telling Alan about the farm and their family.”

For Iglitzin, that connection was about learning the true history of the land and the farm. It meant learning who had carved some of the initials onto the posts in the field, and learning that the room where he had his office was the room in which Sam was born.

“I had been feeling so very, very guilty,” Iglitzin said. “I loved everything about my farm, but I had a sick inner feeling owning it on the tragedy that had befallen that family.”

But the newly formed friendship allowed healing, both for Sam, who had a chance to reconnect with his family’s land, and for Iglitzin, who was creating a musical movement on the farm.

The friendship could not heal everything - Sam still did not talk much about his time in the internment camp, not even to his son until he was on his deathbed. But he did love talking to Alan about the farm.

“We talked about all the things on the farm itself,” Iglitzin said. For example, there’s a case of raspberry liqueur buried somewhere on the property, which I’ve been trying to find for 50 years.”

Iglitzin’s warm welcome had an impact on the entire family. When Sam died in 2004, his kids invited Iglitzin to his memorial service. Iglitzin and his wife, Leigh Hearon also had visits from the entire family at one of their summer concerts in the barn.

“The sum and substance of it is I have deep feelings of appreciation for the pain they went through getting uprooted,” Iglitzin said. “But a new friendship was born, for the entire family.”

PRESERVING THE HISTORY

While 87-year-old Iglitzin has since moved to living full time on Bainbridge Island, and the Olympic Music Festival has moved to Fort Worden, the farm in Quilcene is still a place of music and celebration.

Iglitzin’s wife, Leigh Hearon, is the manager of the property and nonprofit

organization, Trillium Woods Farm. She is currently in preparation for the upcoming Concerts in the Barn summer series, which will feature the Carpe Diem String Quartet. The concerts will be free, and open to all.

“This is just such a perfect place to hear music,” Hearon said. “It’s a great barn, with great acoustics. I like the new paradigm of not charging money for the concerts. I’m hoping more families will come and bring their kids, sit on the lawn and listen to these great musicians.”

A writer herself, the property’s many cabins and

peaceful areas provide a perfect location for Hearon to work on her mystery books, and she hopes to hold writers workshops in the future.

The property is also a restoration site, where volunteers, students and conservationists with the Northwest Watershed Institute have planted hundreds of trees and restored the Tarboo creek for salmon.

Just this year, Hearon worked to secure an easement through the Jefferson Land Trust, so the property will remain as it is forever.

“It’s comforting to know

that the essence of this land will not change,” she said.

Hearon hopes to keep the history of the Iseri family alive through the farm, by highlighting their story on the website and at the summer concerts.

For Bill Iseri, sharing the history of his family and their farm in Jefferson County is an important way to honor his father’s legacy and also the often lost history of the Japanese internment.

“The Japanese from that generation had two popular phrases. One translates roughly to, ‘What is is what is.’ Another is, ‘It can’t be helped,’” he said. “That’s the way my dad’s generation saw it and how they survived the harshness of the camps, and of the war. It’s amazing these people were able to completely reboot and restart their lives.

“There’s a lot of history, but the stories are going to go away because the people who lived through that time are dying off. And history does repeat itself.”