OXNARD — Ventura County JACL will host its annual cleanup at Oxnard Cemetery, located on the corner of Eating Road and Pleasant Valley Road in Oxnard, on Saturday, March 22, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
The cleanup is co-hosted by Keiro and USC’s Alumni Day of Service.
Volunteers are asked to bring gardening gloves, hoes, shovels, rakes, hats, beach chairs or camping chairs, and trash bags. The chapter will provide bottled water and light refreshments.
For more information, email [email protected].
The Japanese Cemetery, Ventura County Historic Landmark 18, contains about 75 known graves. For 45 of them, the birth or death dates are unknown. Many were children under 2 years old.
In 1940, there were 58 businesses, including churches and schools, owned by Japanese Americans in Oxnard. In 1942, all Japanese Americans in the area were sent to incarceration camps; 491 people living in Ventura County were forced to leave.
Seven men who went to the camps in Gila River, Ariz. or Manzanar returned to Oxnard and were buried there after World War II.
The cost to be buried in the segregated Japanese Cemetery was $25. The Masons also charged Japanese Americans five times the standard cost to be buried in the Masonic Cemetery.
The first burial, of 2-year-old Tsugio Kimura, was in 1908. The last burial, of 93-year-old Matsutaro Imagawa, was in 1960.
For more information, email [email protected].