Martha’s Vineyard has a uniquely deep-rooted relationship with the Far East, particularly Japan. Island whaling families still adorn their homes with Japanese treasures brought back two centuries ago by Vineyard sailors returning from Pacific whaling expeditions, and it was with Japanese lanterns and Japanese fireworks that Oak Bluffs residents illuminated the town each summer in the late 19th century.
The first “Japanese store” in Oak Bluffs was probably the firm of Macy & Wing in the late 1870s. “Strangers should not fail to visit the store of Macy & Wing on Commonwealth Avenue,” wrote the Fitchburg Sentinel in 1880, “where they can find a choice collection of goods from China and Japan.… The display of old Karga ware is specially interesting; the clay from which this ware was made was exhausted 400 years ago.”
The most visible legacy of Oak Bluffs’ Japanese era is the unusual building at the bottom of Circuit Avenue, built in the 1880s for Nantucket native Charles H. Macy (1844-1923), presumably the “Macy” of Macy & Wing. Today occupied by Giordano’s Restaurant, the building is still adorned with a pagoda-suggestive roof. Macy made frequent and lengthy trips to Japan, and also maintained stores in Portland, Maine, and Onset. His Boston Globe obituary called him “one of the best-informed authorities in the country on Japanese products, particularly bric-a-brac and silks.”
Following Japan’s victory in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, a newly opened market for Japanese goods in the U.S. triggered a popular craze for all things Japanese: not only for china and porcelain, but also bronze gongs, silk fans, dolls, and kimonos. Like Macy’s, many of the Vineyard’s “Japanese goods” stores had no Japanese owners or employees. In 1905 the Hakar Brothers of Boston, Syrian immigrants Fadlo and Habab Hakar of Damascus, erected the store building now occupied by Mary’s Linen Shop on Circuit Avenue. Experts in Turkish rugs, the Hakars’ new store was nevertheless listed in the 1907 Oak Bluffs directory under “Japanese goods.”
But Japanese families were certainly living on Martha’s Vineyard by the late 1800s — an 1898 Boston Globe article makes reference to a “well-known Japanese family” living in Cottage City — and by 1907 there were two more “Japanese goods” shops listed in Oak Bluffs which were indeed owned by Japanese natives. Mildred Wadsworth, in a 1995 interview with Linsey Lee published in “Vineyard Voices,” recalled “We had two Japanese stores. One was Ishikawa’s and the other was Miyanaga’s. And they sold all sorts of Japanese things. Dishes and knickknacks and things. And Japanese lanterns … and kimonos and little Japanese dolls. All sorts of little things.” In the same book, Mary Coles recalled, “My father used to go wild over those Japanese shops on Circuit Avenue. He would buy kimonos and he would buy wonderful boxes with inlaid wood. Picture of Fujiyama … And those flowers. Those things that you dropped in water, and they’d come out into flowers.”
Ishikawa’s
For many years, Japanese fine artist Shunsui Ishikawa summered above his shop on Circuit Avenue (next door to Hakar Bros.) and wintered in Boston’s Back Bay. Together with his wife Ei and nephew Tokijiro, Ishikawa maintained Japanese goods shops in Boston, Taunton, Lowell, Attleboro, Holyoke, and New York City, as well as in Oak Bluffs. He was a prominent Boston businessman, and a founding member of the still-extant Japan Society of Boston. In 1920, the president of the Women’s Civil League of Malden reported Ishikawa to the Boston police for the display of an imported toy dog in his store window which had a miniature American flag attached to its tail. Ishikawa pled guilty in court, but explained that he had “no intention to show disrespect” for the U.S. flag. He was fined and ordered to remove all the offending merchandise from his stock. His whereabouts after the early
1920s are unknown; the Ishikawa family may have returned to Japan.
Miyanaga’s (Sone’s)
Millie Briggs, in a 1994 interview with Linsey Lee, recalled the Miyanaga family’s store: “[A] big attraction, up until the time of the war, was the Japanese store where all the kids went and bought everything we could buy, all kinds of little goodies for five cents and 10 cents, and little parasols and then they also had china and fancy things. Ah, lovely people. Aiko, I remembered. … All of a sudden at the time of the war, it just went. It just closed down … I don’t know what happened to them.”
Shinjiro and Yoshi Miyanaga came to the United States from Japan in 1892, moving from San Francisco to Brooklyn to Oak Bluffs to open a Japanese goods business and to raise their U.S.-born children, Jo, Grace, Sato, Tama, and their youngest daughter, Aiko, an Oak Bluffs native. The children attended Oak Bluffs School. By 1907 their store on Circuit Avenue (today occupied by Glimpse of Tibet) was advertised as “Dealers in, and Importers of, Japanese Arts and Rare Antique Curios.”
Stuart MacMackin, who grew up across the street in the early 1920s, recalled the Miyanagas in a 1983 article for the Dukes County Intelligencer: “To me, the most attractive store on the Avenue, and the ‘classiest,’ was ‘The Japanese Store’ run by the Miyanaga family. Dignified and hard-working, they filled their store with charming merchandise, including Japanese lacquer work, trays and pictures, silks, as well as other tasteful gifts.”
Shinjiro evidently returned to Japan in the early 1910s, but Yoshi, Jo, and Aiko continued to run their popular summer store for decades, while for a brief time managing a second store in Manhattan, and eventually opening a wintertime store in St. Petersburg, Fla. After Yoshi’s death, Aiko married Japanese trader Taizo Sone of New York, and the family’s shops were renamed “Sone’s.” Many older Vineyarders still fondly remember Sone’s shop.
Then came Pearl Harbor, and World War II, and the summer of 1942, when the Miyanaga-Sone family did not return to Oak Bluffs. They were widely believed to be interned. Although all of the Miyanaga children were born in the United States (and one on Martha’s Vineyard), they were still listed as “aliens” and Japanese citizens in most records. They never returned to the Vineyard.
Mildred Wadsworth continued, “You know what happened to the Japanese people. It was devastating for them because they had been brought up in this country, all the children … But I do know they were grieved over — how they were treated. When they were here on the Island they were accepted just like anyone else.”
But what became of the Miyanagas?
Enter St. Petersburg attorney Tom Masterson. It turns out Masterson studied judo under Taizo Sone in Florida during the 1960s, eventually becoming a national champion himself, and ultimately manager of the 1988 U.S. Olympic judo team. By the end of his life, Sone had become one of the country’s most respected judo senseis. He was inducted posthumously into the Black Belt Hall of Fame in 1972, the same year as Bruce Lee.
Masterson writes, “The Sones were treated very badly during and immediately after the war. I was told that Mrs. Sone [Oak Bluffs native Aiko Miyanaga] never really recovered emotionally. I know that she became very reclusive …
“Mr. Sone was one of the founders who organized judo in Florida. He was respected and admired by all who knew him. He was a gentle and kind man. He loved teaching judo. He influenced many lives through his teaching and by living as he did, with humility and a giving spirit.
“As a store owner, Mr. Sone was a treasure. His store [in St. Petersburg] was called ‘Sone’s Unusual Gifts.’ In addition to imported gifts, his store was filled with many joke items, including shocking pens and books. He loved to offer these items to customers who would open the book and get a good shock. As a young boy, my friends and I loved to go into the store and see Mr. Sone play tricks on the customers. From time to time, Mrs. Sone would work in the store, but it was with little frequency.
“Mr. Sone had a tremendous impact on my judo career and my life. He became sort of a second father to me and my older brother. His motivation was quiet and reserved, but very effective. When Mr. Sone was involved, his students wanted to perform well for him … Mr. Sone was one of the few people who had a profound influence on my life.
“I was told that the Sones were treated as though they were the enemy by the locals. St. Petersburg had virtually no Japanese community in those days. They stayed here for life after the war.”
Chris Baer teaches photography and graphic design at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. He’s been collecting vintage photographs for many years.