I am an old and wise Japanese Beech bonsai. While I am a deciduous tree, I don’t drop my leaves in autumn but rather I hold on tight to my beautiful rust-brown foliage until spring to protect my new leaf buds. I have smooth, white bark, a perfect tapering trunk, intricate branching, and an impeccable design that, all together, makes me one of the finest Japanese Beech bonsai in North America.

I was a big bonsai even on the day they brought me to San Francisco to show me off at the 1915 Panama Pacific Expo. But when my adopted family, the Domotos, were forced to leave me on my own during WWII, I tried to bust out of my container to find them. I reached down into the ground and grew even bigger. Now, I will forever know that boundless feeling.

I was a seed sent through the mail to Japanese American Mr. Furuzawa when he was unfairly incarcerated in a dusty camp during WWII just because he looked like the enemy. Mr Furuzawa planted me in a tin can and patiently watered and watched over me as I grew into a seedling. When he was released three years later, he carried me back to his home and cared for me as we both grew old together. As a seed, I symbolized strength, resilience, and longevity, and as a bonsai, I still do.

I am a Creeping Juniper bonsai. I’ve been in training since 1957 when ‘Father-of-American-Bonsai” John Naka created me from a Juniper plant that he bought in a nursery. He made me into a “raft” style bonsai by laying me on my side and training my ‘literati’ style branches upward. My branches are trained to look like individual, windswept trunks as if a tree growing in the constant breeze of a coastal environment. I’m planted into pockets in a Mexican volcanic “Wonder Rock” which makes me a “rock planting” and I’m covered with mosses and cute ferns.