A grandson makes music and preserves family memories with destroyed cherry trees
It all started when a row of cherry trees was destroyed in downtown Prince Rupert, B.C.
The trees, which once stood outside a federal building, were donated by Shotaro Shimizu — the grandfather of musician Gregory Shimizu.
Shotaro was a Japanese immigrant who lived in Prince Rupert before being sent to an internment camp during the Second World War. In 1960, after starting a new life in Edmonton, Shotaro donated 1,500 cherry trees to the city he used to call home.
Now, Gregory is trying to carry on his grandfather's legacy by collecting the wood from those demolished trees and making bachi — drum sticks used in the musical art form of Japanese drumming, also known as taiko. But before he started this project, the musician knew very little about his grandfather, let alone details about his tree donation. Shotaro died when Gregory was 17, and because Gregory never learned how to speak Japanese, they barely ever spoke.
Discovering his family's past
"All that I knew was my Dad and his parents were all in internment camps in New Denver [B.C.]. I knew that my grandfather had a hotel and café with a business partner. I knew that it was taken away. They were put in the camps, and spent four years there, and moved forward from there, and came to Edmonton, and had to start life over," said Gregory.
After the trees were chopped down, he went on a mission to find out more. For most of Gregory's life, he had treated his grandfather's story of the tree donations like a myth. But reality set in once he discovered a trove of letters and photos sitting in his parents' home. It included letters between Shotaro and the mayor of Prince Rupert at the time.
"This tells you definitely, in 1959, the thank you letter from mayor P.J. Lester about my grandfather's first donation of 500 trees. And then in 1960, a second thank you of the next 1,000 that he had donated. And then the correspondence that my grandfather had with the mayor, saying: 'When these trees arrive, [I] want to make sure they get to the cemetery, and to the hospital, and to the schools'."
Carrying on his grandfather's legacy
After discovering these details about his family's past, Gregory decided that the best way to honour his grandfather's tree donation was to give back to the people that he holds near and dear to his heart — the taiko community.
"This has been a long journey, of a long story being threaded together by three generations. And the only expectation I ever felt was that I did the best I could for the family name, and wanting to follow in their positive footsteps."
Taiko players from around the world have reached out to Gregory, hoping to get their hands on a pair of the bachi sticks. He's currently in the process of having the wood sent from Prince Rupert to Edmonton.