My first adventure in kite flying in China took place 30 years ago when I accompanied the American Kitefliers delegation to the 4th Annual Weifang International Kite Festival in 1987. Our group was led by the legendary David Checkley (1917-1988) of Seattle, a kite enthusiast extraordinaire, who had worked with the City of Weifang in the early 1980s to establish an international event at their annual national kite flying festival and competition. In early 2017 I began planning a trip to Dalian to see my son and daughter in law, Chris and Lynn Mockford who were expecting a baby boy in April. Noticing that the 2017 Weifang Kite Festival would be held April 15-17 I wrote to Mr. Liu Zhiping, Director Weifang International Kite Festival about the event and I was happily surprised to receive an invitation to join them as an “old and distinguished friend” 30 years after my first visit to Weifang.
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In 1987 I at 4th Annual Weifang International Kite Festival I had won the award “One of the Top Ten Kitefliers in the World” and along with a certificate I was presented a wonderful Chinese dragon kite trophy that I donated to the World Kite Museum in Long Beach, Washington. It was an appropriate home for the Weifang Kite because the museum contains the David Checkley Collection of Asian Kites that number over 700 kites from China, Japan, Thailand and other Asian countries that the Checkley’s donated to the museum initiating its establishment and making it a must see attraction at Long Beach Washington during the annual Washington State Kite Festival held annually in August as well as offering a variety of programs year round. The museum’s founding executive director Kay Buesing and her husband Jim were also members of our 1987 Kite flying delegation to China. Kay retired from the museum in the past year but continues to be involved and is known to Kitefliers around the world who attended the Washington State Kite Festival at Long Beach over the years. Therefore I carried a few simple World Kite Museum kites with me to fly in China and promote the museum that has the largest collection of Asian Kites and is a testimony to over 30 years of goodwill and friendship between China and the USA. See http://www.worldkitemuseum.com/ .
34th Weifang International Kite Festival Program Cover 2017
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As I was making arrangements to visit Weifang again Mr. Liu sent me another surprising invitation to come to China a week earlier and join him and other international kite delegates to the First Dunhuang International Kite Festival held April 8-9 in Gansu Province at the gateway to The Silk Road. We were enticed by the opportunity to visit the fabulous Mogao Caves and Singing Sand Mountain at Crescent Lake, an oasis in the midst of Sand Dunes as The Silk Road leaves Gansu Province for its long western journey across Xinjiang. So we moved our departure dates up in order to travel over 1,000 miles west from Beijing to Dunhuang and we got ready to fly our kites from the Silk Road to the sea!
See story in the Northwest China Council Newsletter
The 25th anniversary of the Great Hanshin Earthquake in Hyogo Japan was remembered in January 2020 with events in Japan and Washington State that recall the magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck at 5:46 a.m. on Jan 17, 1995, that killed 6,434 people in Hyogo Prefecture sister state of Washington State including Seattle’s sister city Kobe.
I was teaching Japanese at Camas High School in Washington State and we discussed the tragedy during the week after it occurred including cultural ways that Japanese show their support for those in grief at a time of loss. The Story of Sadako and the 1000 Cranes is one well known story of a Hiroshima survivor who suffered from radiation sickness after the atomic bombing in 1945 and passed away before she was able to complete the folding of 1000 paper cranes. Her friends and classmates completed the 1000 crane origami as a memorial to her and it became a tradition for Japanese school children to fold garlands of 1000 paper cranes (“Senbazuru”) and place them at the children’s memorial in Hiroshima often called the “Sadako Statue.” Children from around the world also send paper cranes to Hiroshima too. The creation of “Senbazuru” became popular to express sympathies on other occasions at other places across Japan. During the winter of 1995 just days after the Hyogo earthquake it snowed in Camas closing school for a few days. When school reopened my students returned to class with paper origami cranes they had made at home during the snow storm and we completed a garland of 1000 paper cranes to send to Hyogo as a memorial to the students lost in the earthquake. This blog tells the story of the journey of 1000 Paper Cranes from Camas to Hyogo, Japan.
Camas Students with Takeo Terahata, Executive Director of Hyogo Cultural Center SeattleCamas Students sing Sukiyaki (“Ue o Muite Arukou”)
We decided to place the 1000 paper cranes at the Japanese Castaways Monument at Fort Vancouver that was presented by the Governor of Hyogo and Hyogo Boy Scouts in 1989 as a Washington State Centennial Project. The monument remembers the first Japanese to arrive in the Pacific Northwest and the stay of the 3 young castaways at Fort Vancouver in 1834. Mr. Takeo Terahata Representative of the Hyogo Cultural Center in Seattle came to Vancouver to accept the gift of the 1000 paper cranes for the victims of the Hyogo Earthquake. Camas students prepared a special box for the cranes to travel and the origami garland was lifted from the box and hung at the monument while the students sang Sukiyaki “Ue o Muite Arukou” a song in Japanese meaning “I look up when I walk” and speeches were heard by citizens of Camas and Vancouver who attended the ceremony including Vancouver Mayor Bruce Hagensen, Hyogo Cultural Center Executive Director Takeo Teraoka, Chairman of Friends of MacDonald Mas Tomita, Reporter for the Japanese Newspaper Mas Yatabe, and Superintendent Fort Vancouver David Herrera and others.
The 1000 Cranes for Hyogo then travelled to the Washington State Capitol in Olympia where they were part of a remembrance held by the legislature and the 1000 cranes made another stop and exhibited at the Seattle Cherry Blossom and Japanese Cultural before they were sent by the Hyogo Center to Ashiya Minami High School in Hyogo where four students had been lost during the earthquake.
Article by Mas Yatabe in the North American Post “Hokubei Hochi” NewspaperLetter of May 17 1995 Hyogo Culture CenterCertificate of Appreciation from Governor Toshitami Kaihara of Hyogo Prefecture
This month 25 years after the Great Hanshin Earthquake my former students have gone on to a variety of careers and many are parents of children some in high school but I think they remember the time when they responded to this tragedy in Japan with empathy, grace, and goodwill.
On April 2, 2019 we set out from Ikema Island Harbor by small boat to the Yabiji Reef lying 5-10 km off of the northwest side of Miyako Island, Japan. Author, educator, and local historian Akira Andaniya was our guide to the location of the shipwreck site where HMS Providence struck the reef on May 17, 1797. Captain William Robert Broughton described the disaster in his ship’s log and although the ship was lost all of the crew and officers survived and were assisted by the Miyako Islanders when the ship’s boats came ashore in search of food and water. I had long been interested in the shipwreck of the HMS Providence and the career of Captain Broughton because just five years earlier in 1792 as a Lieutenant under the command of Captain George Vancouver he had explored the Columbia River by boat 100 miles from the mouth of the river and Lt. Broughton had named many of the geographic features along the Columbia near my home including Mt. Hood.
I wrote about the Columbia River expedition in my essay, “Before Lewis and Clark, Lt. Broughton’s River of Names: the Columbia River Exploration of 1792” published in Oregon Historical Quarterly Winter 2005 and one of several essays I wrote as I continued to embark on my own expeditions following Broughton’s voyages on HMS Chatham during Vancouver’s “Voyages of Discovery” that included adventures sailing on replica tall ship Brig Lady Washington in the San Juan Islands and Puget Sound, a First Peoples boat tour from Telegraph Cove on Vancouver Island into the Johnstone Strait and Queen Charlotte Strait in British Columbia, a five thousand mile cruise across the South Pacific to Tahiti as a cruise ship lecturer, and several trips to Hawaii to participate in the Maritime Archeology and History of the Hawaiian Islands Symposium (MAHHI). I stood at Cape Soya, Hokkaido (the northernmost point in Japan) in 2012 where I could see Sakhalin across the Soya Strait (also known as La Perouse Strait) and east to the Sea of Okhotsk and paid my respects at the La Perouse Monument at Cape Soya. Broughton like La Perouse had sailed past northern Japan to explore Sakhalin and he charted the coast of Northeast Asia during his voyages of 1796 and 1797 on HMS Providence and schooner. Finally in 2019 I finally made the long journey all the way to the southernmost chain of Japanese Islands in the Ryukyu Archipelago to the place where Broughton’s voyage on HMS Providence came to a sudden end.
The planning stage for the Miyako Island trip began some years ago when I met Zenki Otsuka who established the Miyako Island (Miyakojima) Kids Net as educational project to monitor marine debris on both sides of the Pacific and to provide information about issues that small islands face. The problems are long term so developing an awareness of the issues in children is strategic so they will become involved in learning about remote islands and share ideas about solutions for the future. Thanks to Zenki Otsuka I was introduced to historians and community leaders at Miyako Island who had been involved in the 200th Anniversary of the Providence shipwreck in 1997 and my son Chris visited Miyako Island in February 2018 when Chris attended the of the First Miyako Island Literary Conference. I wanted to visit in the spring when the tides are at an annual low and the conditions would be similar to those that HMS Providence encountered in 1797.
Koji Miyakawa a member of the Miyako Island “Friends of Providence” kindly assisted by email with my trip planning so when my wife and I arrived we were met by a group of Providence enthusiasts for dinner where copies of the ship’s charts were shared along with information in English and Japanese about Captain Broughton and the Providence shipwreck. It was a pleasure to meet him and Akira Andaniya, Chair of Miyakojima City Historical Committee, an author of historical essays about HMS Providence and was our guide to Yabiji Reef, Satoshi Oshiro a dentist and organizer of Miyakojima history projects , Toshiko Ishimine, an architect, and two men from Ikema Island, Toshi Arasaki, model ship builder who built a model of HMS Providence for the 200th Anniversary celebration in 1997, Chikao Yonamine, former City Council member and our driver for a tour of Miyako Island, Irabu and Shimoji Islands.
Boat Trip to Yabiji Reef from Ikema Island Harbor and tour of Miyako Island – April 2019
We arrived at Miyako Island on the first day of April 2019 and on April 2 we set out by boat for the Yabiji Reef sometimes called “illusion island” or “the phantom island” because once a year during the spring low tides parts of it appear above sea level and it was during this season that HMS Providence struck the shallow reef in May 1797. We headed out to the shipwreck site and saw breakers on the reef much like what was reported in Captain Broughton’s log as “whitewater a-head an upon the bow” just before the ship struck the “reef of coral rocks.”
It was a beautiful sunny day and set out by boat with captain Kenji Ketsuren and two deckhands from Ikema School took Andaniya-san and my wife and I out about 10 km navigating inside and outside of the reef so we could see the breakers from the outside and the calmer waters inside where the deep blue sea changed to lighter hues of blue and green as the coral rocks came closer and closer to the surface ( See video of boat on YouTube ).
Chart of our Yabiji Reef Tour on April 2, 2019
Returning back to Ikema Island Harbor we had lunch at the school cafeteria and I took a look at a heavy artifact of iron ship’s ballast retrieved from the reef years ago. I was told that the islanders recovered a great deal of wood from the shipwreck that was used for home building materials and also iron ballast that was recycled as scrap during the WWII or years after the war. Only a few pieces of ship’s ballast remain. Miyako Island is one of the most frequently hit by typhoon places in the world and so the rebuilding of wooden houses over the past two hundred years has made it unlikely and nearly impossible to determine if any of the wood retrieved from the Providence shipwreck is still hidden in the structure of an old building.
Jim with ship’s ballast
During our tour of Miyako Island we stopped at the Miyakojima City Museum where curator Yuka Nitta kindly explain the many exhibits including a traditional thatched hut that portrayed the life of Miyako Island centuries ago and was likely the kind of lifestyle that Captain Broughton and the men of Providence observed when the came ashore in 1797. Also in the museum was an old wooden sign with the characters “Tai Pin San” that was another name for Miyako Island in Chinese characters as noted in Captain Broughton’s log book, “called by the natives Typinsan.”
Tour of Miyako Island with views from Atoll Emerald Hotel 12th Floor, views from bridges, scenic stops at beaches, Toriike Ponds, and wonderful dinner with Miyako Island “Friends of Providence” and meeting with Miyako Island Mayor Toshihiko Shimoji.
What a wonderful trip and many thanks to everyone who assisted us with the visit.
2019 marks the 69th anniversary of the Portland-Sapporo Sister City Association (PSSCA). For current news about PSSCA and programs check out the Facebook site at https://www.facebook.com/portland.sapporo/ and web site at http://www.portland-sapporo.org/ This blog will post a few “way back” stories about Portland and Sapporo exchanges that took place about 40 years ago.
Growing up in Portland I knew that we had a sister city in Japan called Sapporo and because the Portland-Sapporo Sister City Association (PSSCA) was established in 1959 it already had a track record of interesting activities and cultural exchanges before I was invited to join PSSCA in the late 1970s. I had been to Japan three times in that decade and I studied for a year in Tokyo thanks to the Oregon overseas study program at Waseda University. My first trip to Sapporo was in 1975 as a student. After graduation from the University of Oregon and another trip to Japan I eventually returned to Portland and was invited to participate in PSSCA. It was the eve of the 20th Anniversary of PSSCA and many activities were scheduled.
CASCADE RUN OFF: In June 1979 a group of marathoners from Japan were coming to Portland to race in the Cascade Run Off and I was asked to assist as a volunteer interpreter. My first reply was “Do I have to run with them?” but fortunately (for them) I would be needed during their tour of Portland and at social events and they would be just fine without me during the race. At the Cascade Run Off I took photographs and here are a few slides to share memories of the event.
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The Sapporo delegation was led by Kodama-san and Coach Hanawa-san accompanied by three runners Masuda-san, Maki-san and Kanai-san to participate in the Cascade Run-Off.
PORTLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS TELEVISION / PPS-TV: The television documentary that was produced by John Rausch at Portland Public School Television (PPS-TV) required a a volunteer interpreter and I also became the narrator in Japanese for the TV Program to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Portland-Sapporo Sister City Association. It was hoped that an American speaking Japanese would be a nice gesture even if my Japanese was not perfect. I wrote a script that would work as well as possible for my narration and in those days the PPS-TV studio was at Jefferson High School where the post production was completed. John’s team of cameraman and sound techs were students and the assignment was to follow exchange students from Sapporo during their visit to Portland and film their homestays and adventures in the community. The professional format for television cameras was still the old 2″ tape and VHS tape (and Sony Betamax) was still a new thing (We later converted our professional tape to VHS). The TV program after conversion from VHS to DVD and uploaded to the cloud can now be viewed in two parts at the links below. The quality of the film is not as good as television today but after all it was filmed 40 years ago with the technology of that period and was upgraded with home technology used in the conversions to newer forms of media at different times. Viewing it today gives an idea of the Portland that Sapporo students visited in 1979. Any errors in translation or narration are mine. We posted the video in two parts due to media size.
Sapporo Student Visit to Portland 1979 Part 1
Part 1 of the video ends in the classroom and it continues below in Part 2
Sapporo Student Visit to Portland 1979 Part 2
Watch the credits at the end of the program and you can see the names of Sapporo students, Kazumi Ishida, Hiroki Maeya, Maki Wakui, and Atsutomo Mori.
Fast forward to 2018 and some young members and some older members of PSSCA gathered in Portland to talk about the upcoming 60th Anniversary. Here are a few photos from a “Sapporo Hangout” at Ecliptic Brewing in Portland. Hang on for further news about other “Sapporo Hangouts” and watch Facebook for announcements about the next one. https://www.facebook.com/portland.sapporo/
This post is about the continuing travels of the Ranald MacDonald Japanese Rokkaku style kite. It made it’s aerial maiden voyage at Long Beach, Washington State during the One Sky One World International Kite Fly for Peace and was announced in conjunction with the Astoria Library’s 50th Anniversary in October 2017 (as reported in the earlier post). In the fall of 2017 we took the kite on travels to places where Ranald MacDonald lived or visited in the 1800s such as Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.
MacDonald attended the school at the fort until the spring of 1834 but soon after he left with his father for Canada three young castaways from Japan were brought to Fort Vancouver after shipwreck on the northwest Washington coast. The news of the Japanese arrival must have intrigued young Ranald at age 10 having just missed them at Fort Vancouver and as he reached age 20 he began planning a way to visit Japan himself. He set out by whaling ship for the far side of the world and arrived in Lahaina Maui Hawaii the whaling center of the Pacific resolved to find a way to go to Japan. MacDonald had heard a bit about Hawaii because there were Hawaiians at Fort Vancouver.
In November 2017, we took the Ranald MacDonald Rokkaku Kite to Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii where Ranald arrived by whaling ship in the mid-1840s and shipped out on the whaler Plymouth under Captain Edwards in 1847 for Japan. Today Lahaina has a historic trail that I highly recommend to anyone interested in the Ranald MacDonald story. A map for the walking tour is available (at http://lahainatown.com/lahaina-historic-walking-tour.php ) that will guide you around town past some historic structures that date to MacDonald’s visit and several museums that help tell the story of the whaling capital during those days.
The stops along the way include the Baldwin House and Master’s Reading Room on Front Street, the waterfront with Haula Stone, Old Lahaina Lighthouse, and the Pioneer Inn with famous Banyan Tree in back, then the must see Old Lahaina Courthouse that is now a museum with whaling artifacts that Ranald MacDonald would have seen in his whaling days, and just outside the remnants of the old fort made from coral blocks.
A bit further along the trail is the Wailoa Church that was the first stone church in Hawaii and built between 1828 and 1832 and rebuilt many times since. The historic Wainee Cemetery is next to the church. It may have been more likely that a sailor during the days of whaling in Lahaina was more likely to see the inside of the prison than set foot in the church so the Old Prison Museum is a must although it was newly built just after MacDonald’s time in Lahaina. However, there is a whaling boat in the prison yard to see there too. There are many other sites on the trail and some off the trail. We drove to Lahainaluna High School to see the Hale Pai Printing Museum and received a tour from Curator Chris Conley who showed us how the first Hawaiian language newspaper Ka Lama was printed. He also obtained an electronic copy on his computer of an 1848 issue of The Friend newspaper published in Honolulu by Rev. Samuel Damon that reported the adventure of Ranald MacDonald in Japan.
Hale Pai Printing Museum
Hale Pai Printing MuseumCurator Chris Conley with Jim
The Baldwin Home Museum
Theo Morrison LRF Executive Director and Judy Kinser, Executive Assistant with Jim at Baldwin Home
In order to take a photo of the Ranald MacDonald Rokkaku Kite flying with Maui in the background we visited Molokai and found a beach at Pukuo’o on the southeast side of the island.
Look for updates in 2018 at kite flying and story telling continues…
The Ranald MacDonald Japanese Rokkaku style kite made its’s aerial maiden voyage October 7 and 8, 2017 at Long Beach, Washington State during the One Sky One World International Kite Fly for Peace (held annually, around the globe on … Continue reading →
The Mogao Caves were something to look forward to seeing after a weekend of kite flying at the First International Dunhuang Kite Festival in April 2017. Located just 25 km outside of Dunhuang City our bus stopped at the interpretive center for an introduction and film of the history of the area and then we drove up to the cliffs where the entrance is centered amidst a system of 492 cave temples of which we would enter about 20 caves
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I was excited to visit the historical site because I had heard about the Mogao Caves from friends and family who had visited them and provided enthusiastic reports. I also gained some further information about the caves during the 2916 Getty Museum exhibition Cave Temples of Dunhuang that I was unable to attend but followed online at http://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/cave_temples_dunhuang/index.html
Like many tourists to the area our kite delegation decided to get the feel of the silk road by heading on to Crescent Lake, a spring fed oasis in the shape of a half moon that offered a camel ride along the Singing Sand Mountain of dunes that surround the temple by Crescent Lake.
To arrive in the proximity of Longitude 94° East we had traveled over 1,000 miles west from Beijing to Dunhuang in Gansu Province at the gateway to the Silk Road and arrived at Dunhuang on April 7 to be there for the opening ceremony … Continue reading →
November 11 2018 marks 100 years since the end of World War I. We visited the battlefields of World War I in France in 2016 during the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme. Albert, France was our base of operation for … Continue reading →
We were in London for the Centenary of The Somme on June 30, 2016 and Cheryl and I attended a segment of the All-Night Vigil at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey. Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh attended about an hour before we arrived and we saw the wreath Queen Elizabeth II presented at the Grave of the Unknown. We watched readings of “The story of the Battle of the Somme in their own words…” and a changing of the guard every 15 minutes for the hour or so that we observed the proceedings before lighting our candle to the memory of great uncle Herbert Mockford who was killed in combat on September 16, 1916 at The Somme.
We visited Imperial War Museum where “The Night Before The Somme” program included music and poetry and performance of “Dr. Blighty” in the Atium while we drank “Gunfire Tea” (a rum tea recipe that soldiers drank at the front during WWI).
I met author Taylor Downing for the book signing of his “Breakdown: The Crisis of Shell Shock on The Somme” and kept it for my in-flight reading on our journey home. The Finale in the Atrium was BBC Young Musician of the Year finalist Stephanie Childress performing on the “Western Front Violin” made from trees that grew along the Somme Battlefield.
Jim and Cheryl Mockford
Royal Opera House
On July 1 we attended the performance of the Welsh National Opera presentation of “In Parenthesis” at Royal Opera House. This opera was commissioned as part of the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme and is based on the 1937 epic poem about WWI by David Jones, grandfather’s second cousin. After the opera we went out on the town with my second cousin Kitty Ellard whom we spent a couple of days with in London seeing some lesser known sites and we joined David Jones’s grand niece Sarah Williams (my 4th cousin) and her husband Ian whom I met in 2015 during the Faversham Nautical Festival at their home in Faversham, Kent.
As an executor of the Jones estate Sarah has been very involved with centenary activities involving the use of David Jones material in the Opera program and the exhibits of his paintings at galleries such as Palant House Gallery’s exhibit “David Jones: Vision and Memory.” in 2015. Art historian and BBC Producer, Kenneth Clark, believed that David Jones was the greatest British watercolourist of the 20th century and Author Mark Sheerin said, “Pallant has revived a painter with wit, verve, technique, and vision. David Jones has everything, except perhaps fame.” There has been a rediscovery of David Jones during the centenary of WWI and we found his name in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey as one of the Great War Poets.
