Posted: July 18th, 2008
Photo by Nic Garcia
Little Tokyo’s Aoyama Tree designated a monument
The 60-foot tall Moreton Bay Fig symbolizes the founding of the Koyasan Buddhist Temple in downtown Los Angeles in 1920.
By Joanna Lin, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
12:50 PM PDT, July 17, 2008
Los Angeles designated Little Tokyo’s Aoyama Tree as a cultural-historic monument today.
The 60-foot tall Moreton Bay Fig symbolizes the founding of the Koyasan Buddhist Temple downtown in 1920.
The tree was planted in what Deanna Matsumoto of the Little Tokyo Historical Society called Little Tokyo’s formative years, an era of racial segregation when Japanese Americans labored on farms, shipyards and railroads.
Read the rest of this story in the L.A. Times.
See a picture of the tree in Rafu Shimpo.
Learn more about Monuments, Diversity, and Democracy.
Visit the Heritage Parkscape online and on flickr.
