Simpson Church: 100 vital years

Fernando Quintero, Rocky Mountain News

Published July 26, 2007 at midnight

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Since 1907, Japanese-Americans, the state's only ethnic group that's shrinking, have found a cultural and spiritual haven there.

In her darkest hours, Aiko Okubo found strength and solace in the fellowship of Simpson United Methodist Church - once called the "Japanese Church."

They were there for her 45 years ago when her 7-year-old daughter, Candy, died of a brain injury after she slipped on a patch of ice.

They were there when her husband, Hank, died in 2002 after 48 happily married years. Both had moved to Denver after being confined to Japanese internment camps in Colorado and Idaho during World War II.

Most important, the church provided a connection to her culture at times when she needed it most.

Okubo hesitated, then chuckled as she recalled the moment she decided her family would become devoted Simpson parishioners.

"Candy was 5 when we started going to church," she said. "All of our friends were Caucasians. One day after church she said, 'I don't want to go back to that church. They're all Chinese.' I thought, 'Oh, my God, she doesn't even know we're Japanese.'

"We had to continue going to church for our daughter's sake."

Simpson has served as the cultural and spiritual hub of Colorado's Japanese-American community for 100 years.

In late June, church members quietly marked the church's centennial celebration, honoring the remaining few issei and nisei - the first and second generations of Japanese immigrants who came to Colorado.

Decline in number

Though the vast majority of Japanese immigrants to the U.S. settled in California, Washington and Oregon, some also settled in Colorado, where they started farms, mostly along the South Platte River and in the Arkansas Valley.

Their numbers grew after World War II, largely because Colorado Gov. Ralph L. Carr was sympathetic toward them at a time when anti-Japanese hostilities were rampant.

"Our 100-year anniversary is a testament to the strength of the Japanese-American community here in Colorado," said Paul Murphy-Geiss, who has been the senior minister at Simpson for the past year. "I've come to learn the important role the church has taken to keep the cultural aspects of this community alive."

But since 2000, their numbers have begun to dwindle. And the aging - and shrinking - Japanese-American membership at Simpson poses a threat to its cultural legacy.

The Simpson church got its start on a September evening in 1907, when Hamanosuke Shigeta held a Christian meeting in his home in the 2100 block of Arapahoe Street in downtown Denver.

That same year, Japan agreed to issue passports for emigrants to the United States only to certain categories of business and professional men. In return, President Theodore Roosevelt urged the city of San Francisco to rescind an order by which children of Japanese parents were segregated from white students in schools.

The following year, Shigeta's newly formed congregation voted unanimously to become a part of the Japanese Methodist Episcopal Mission.

Though many first-generation Japanese settlers belonged to the Buddhist religion, the Methodist church had conducted missions in Japan and opened their doors in the United States to immigrants. In subsequent years, Simpson occupied various downtown locations, providing a haven for Colorado's growing Japanese population.

A large wave of Japanese-Americans came during the war, when people with as little as one-sixteenth Japanese blood were sent to internment camps throughout the West.

The day Pearl Harbor was bombed, someone hurled a large rock through a stained-glass window of the Simpson church.

Colorado sanctuary

Julia Kamura and her parents joined Simpson soon after they arrived in Denver from the Minidoka Relocation Center near Twin Falls, Idaho, where they had spent three or four years.

The family lived at the corner of Champa and California streets, near the church.

"There were lots of Japanese members," said Kamura, 69. "We had food bazaars and Japanese doll festivals. It felt comforting to be there."

She said that like many other Japanese-American families, her parents chose Colorado because of the governor's sympathetic posture toward internees, a position that ended his political career.

"This was like sanctuary," Kamura said.

Okubo, like Kamura, was sent away from her home in Seattle to Minidoka. She, along with her twin sister and father, moved into a hotel on Larimer Street after they left the camp in 1945.

"People from Seattle were told not to go back," Okubo said. "There was still a lot of discrimination and hostility toward Japanese-Americans."

Her family attended the Denver Buddhist Temple on Lawrence Street before joining Simpson. Though the church moved to Arvada in 1967, the two religious institutions still share some members and celebrate funerals, weddings and cultural events together.

It was at a temple party that Okubo met her husband, Hank Okubo, a former internee from the Amache internment camp near Granada in southeastern Colorado. He became one of

Simpson's most active members.

Their son, Derek Okubo, 47, has taken over his father's work to preserve the Amache internment camp, one of 10 camps set to be restored with $38 million in National Park Service funds approved in December.

"As the years go by, my generation and the younger generation have gotten away from our heritage," said Okubo, a Littleton resident who is vice president of the National Civic League in Denver. "Internment is something people don't like to talk about, but history offers us a chance to reconnect with our heritage."

As does Simpson church.

Need to assimilate

Over the years, the makeup of the church changed as the number of Japanese-Americans in Colorado dwindled.

Census figures show that between 2000 and 2005, Japanese-Americans were the only ethnic group in Colorado that declined, from 11,571 to 9,652.

"I still maintain the membership books," said the Rev. Robert Bruns, who became pastor at Simpson in 1969 and later spent 20 years as a missionary in Japan. "Compared to the books from the '60s, there aren't as many Japanese names. Many have married Anglos and Hispanics. There aren't as many Japanese speakers."

Gil Asakawa, a Denver journalist who has written a number of articles and books on the Japanese-American experience, said the high rate of intermarriage is largely a result of the war.

"In the '60s, Japanese-Americans had a tragic need to assimilate, since they were seen as foreigners for so long," Asakawa said. "Some Japanese didn't want to even eat their own food."

Services at Simpson are simultaneously held in two chapels. In the main chapel, the service is in English.

In a smaller chapel, where shoji screens partially cover stained- glass windows, the dozen or so Japanese-speaking elder parishioners listen to a taped sermon in their language.

On the walls of the chapel for Japanese speakers, historical photographs from the church archives commemorate the church's 100th anniversary.

"We had a Japanese baseball league," said Kamura, who is pictured in a 1968 photograph of the Simpson church choir.

"We had our own bowling league. We had our own groups because we got segregated. Most of the people in these pictures are gone or in nursing homes. There's no more issei. Pretty soon, these memories will be gone."

But many believe Simpson's legacy is strong enough to last for future generations.

"Many kids come from mixed marriages, but they are at Japanese Sunday school," said Bruns. "They're involved in Japanese drumming, or dancing or martial arts. Their parents are making sure they don't forget where they came from."

Community at a glance

• Population 9,652

• 65 and older 2,291

• Average household size 2

• Bachelor degree or higher 4,121

• Civilian veterans 1,066

• Foreign-born 4,253

• Speak a language other than English at home 4,600

• Median household income $44,842

• Families below poverty level 83Source: 2000, 2005 U.S. Census

Through the decades: Japanese-Americans in Colorado

• SEPTEMBER 1907: Hamanosuke Shigeta, a devout Christian, holds a meeting in his home in downtown Denver. He and two others start a church, said to be the beginning of what is now Simpson United Methodist Church in Arvada.

That same year, Japan agrees to limit Japanese immigration to the United States to certain categories of business and professional men. In return, President Theodore Roosevelt agrees to urge the city of San Francisco to stop segregating Japanese children in schools.

• NOV. 13, 1922: The U.S. Supreme Court rules against a Japanese applicant for naturalization, definitively prohibiting Japanese from becoming naturalized citizens. This ban lasts until 1952.

Segregation leads many Japanese-Americans in Denver to start their own athletic leagues and social organizations.

• DEC. 7, 1941: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, setting off a wave of hysteria and prejudice against Japanese-Americans, whom military officials suspect would sympathize with the Japanese government and be recruited as spies. That day, a stone is thrown through a stained-glass window of California Street Methodist Church, which would later become Simpson United Methodist Church.

• FEB. 19, 1942: President Franklin Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, which leads to 112,000 Japanese-Americans being forced into internment camps in nine states, including Colorado.

• FEB. 29, 1942: Colorado Republican Gov. Ralph L. Carr issues a statement welcoming law-abiding Japanese ordered removed from the West Coast. "They are as loyal to the American institutions as you and I," he declares. This would cost him his political career. He was widely criticized and subsequently lost his bid for the United States Senate. The Rev. Seijiro Uemura, who was pastor of Simpson from 1929 to 1947, was instrumental in leading Carr to his position. Uemura and the church were on excellent terms with high-ranking political figures.

• DECEMBER 1944: The War Department revokes the West Coast exclusion orders. More than half of those put in camps return to the West Coast. But many are greeted with threats and acts of terrorism. A number of those interned in Amache camp near Granada remain in Colorado because the state is perceived as more welcoming.

• OCT. 15, 1983: The Japanese Association of Colorado is formed. Today, the association is largely a community social service organization. It contributes to Simpson United Methodist Church and the Denver Buddhist Temple, and it comforts the elderly, sends flowers to the ailing and provides monetary funeral offerings to the bereaved.

• JUNE 22-24, 2007: Simpson United Methodist Church celebrates its 100th anniversary. The celebration includes a historical quilt and photographic display, a banquet and worship service.Source: Japanese American Citizens League And Colorado'S Japanese Americans By Bill Hosokawa.

quinterof@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5250

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