The First Japanese Immigrants

Before the Meiji Restoration, even before Commodore Perry forced Japan to open up trade with the outside world, a colony of farmers in 1851 moved to the Sierra foothills near the towns of Gold Hill and Placerville.   In this photo the Tendai priest Dr Ryoei Tyler officiates (along with a Jodo Shinshu priest) for an April 3013 memorial at a festival on the grounds where the farm originally stood.  He is from the Tendai Mission of Hawaii, and the photo was published in "California's Oldest Newspaper -- The Mountain Democrat --Est.1851."