Mary Adams Urashima

Mary Adams Urashima is a historian, former journalist and freelance writer, with thirty years in media, governmental and public affairs, and author of Historic Wintersburg in Huntington Beach (History Press). She chairs the grassroots preservation effort to save the Furuta Gold Fish Farm and Wintersburg Japanese Mission property in Huntington Beach, known as Historic Wintersburg. Mary identified and named the historic property, which was designated one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2014 and one of America’s National Treasures in 2015.

Mary has been researching and working to save Historic Wintersburg for almost nine years. Historic Wintersburg marks more than a century of Japanese American history and represents pioneer arrival and settlement in the American West, Orange County’s agricultural history, pioneer achievement, and the struggle for civil liberties. Everyone associated with the Furuta farm and Wintersburg Japanese Mission faced alien land laws and was forcibly removed from California and incarcerated during World War II.

Chapters is a five-part Creative + Cultural Podcast series dedicated to stories surrounding the exclusion, forced removal, and internment of Japanese-Americans. The program also parallels a narrative thread through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Chapters is supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program administered by the California State Library. This episode was recorded live on August 26 at the 1888 Center located in the Historic District of Old Towne Orange, CA.

Producer: Heritage Future
Host: Trevor Allred
Guest: Mary Adams Urashima
Audio: Brew Sessions Live
Music composed and performed by Dan Reckard