For many of us who grew up in Altadena, the destruction wrought by last week’s wildfires means the loss of far more than buildings.
By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS, Rafu Staff Writer?
In the coming weeks and months, countless stories will emerge detailing the personal experiences during the catastrophic wildfires that have upended so many lives in the L.A. area.
Altadena is an unincorporated yet uniquely tight-knit community, hewn of a highly representative mix of people from a great many and varied walks of life. With thousands of homes and community institutions destroyed, this small and unassuming town has suffered an outsized disaster.
In an instant, families who have been established in this foothill enclave for generations now find themselves with absolutely nothing, and no idea what the future holds.
There are so many fundraising efforts popping up for those who have lost everything that the GoFundMe website has created a new section specifically to help assist wildfire victims.
Artist Miki Yokoyama and her family in Altadena lost everything overnight, including nearly her entire life’s work. Friends and strangers have responded with an outpouring of generosity, pledging more than $45,000, including an anonymous donation of $5,000.
Cornerstones of the community, like the Altadena Community Church, are nothing more than burned-out shells of buildings. Undaunted, the congregation gathered just the same last Sunday, welcomed with open arms at the Montebello Plymouth Congregational Church.
“My congregation has tough decisions ahead of us about a church facility,” Michael Okamura said. “At least a half-dozen members in Altadena lost their home. It’s devastating for so many in my orbit.”
A staff member at Azay in Little Tokyo, Okamura has spent much of the last week delivering meals from the restaurant to evacuees in the Altadena/Pasadena area.
Each home, each gathering spot or local place of business, whether still standing or in ashes, is filled with history and stories. There are so many to tell that it feels impossible to know where to start. I’m not sure it’s even possible to tell them all.
I live in South Pasadena now, about 10 minutes away, but the bulk of my childhood was spent living at several addresses in Altadena. We literally lived in all four corners of the town: north in the Meadows, in the south near Victory Park, in the west across from the creepy cemetery, and in two different houses ?– on the same block, no less – in East Altadena.
Not sure why we relocated so often; probably a result of my father’s uncanny knack for losing a job. He always bounced back, though, at one point even opening his own hi-fi speaker shop on North Allen Avenue. When I think about it now, it must have felt to my mother and older siblings like we were constantly on the move; between elementary school and the time I graduated high school, we lived in six different houses in Altadena and Pasadena.
Despite repeatedly pulling up stakes, my parents made everything seem stable for us kids, even amid a devastating divorce. I have no memory of suffering as a child.
I was part of a generation that attended the highly progressive Washington Center Alternative School, where we addressed all our teachers by their first name. Since we moved so often, I attended four junior high schools. The happy result of a new school every semester lingers to this day, as I made friends in neighborhoods all across town.
I played baseball in the East Altadena Little League, on a team coached by a dear man named Larry Harter. To this day, he refers to me as “Lefty.”
We spent countless hours at La Pintoresca Park, where there was a library adjacent to the playground that boasted one of those tall steel “rocket ship” play structures with a metal slide that fried your bottom in the summertime. We sipped 50-cent slushies from the Stop & Go and then hopped across the street to Webster’s Pharmacy, to ogle its rather large toy department.
Much to my mother’s chagrin, my enrollment at St. Elizabeth’s Sunday School was short-lived. I was so full of curious questions – “Why did Jesus always wear sandals?” “Did Noah have rats and rocks on the Ark?” – that the vicar eventually walked to my home and suggested Mom teach me the lessons of the Good Book herself.
My first exposure to Japanese culture was at the annual summer Obon Festival at Pasadena Buddhist Temple, just a few blocks from my school. The grand main building escaped significant fire damage last week, thanks to neighbors who noticed burning embers igniting a signpost and doused the flames with garden hoses.
Of all the houses we called home when I was growing up, my favorite is a magnificent, five-bedroom craftsman home on North Mar Vista Avenue. I’m happy to report it seems to be unscathed by the fires.
My head was full of dreams in Altadena. When my nose wasn’t in Archie comics or Peanuts books, I imagined myself as the Six Million Dollar Man, leaping from the huge downed elm tree in our yard. My swell cadre of friends was a true reflection of Altadena’s diversity – Patricia Patts, Peter Redman, Curtis Kitani and Marco Estrada, to name a few. I regularly cast many of them in my “productions” after receiving a Super 8mm movie camera for Christmas one year.
Last week, watching the pillars of my youth literally going up in flames before my eyes felt like a hole was being burned in my very identity.
Many of the shops I knew as a kid were long gone years ago – the Baskin-Robbins where my sister worked as a teenager, the Market Basket, the original Steve’s Pet Place. My older brother swears he can still feel the tang of the sauce at Robbie’s Rib Cage.
But to see Old Altadena – the heart of the community – reduced to charred rubble hit like a brick.
I watched two main buildings at Eliot Arts Magnet (my former junior high) go up in flames. The Chevron station at Lake and Altadena Drive won’t be supplying gas in the near future. All the houses in St. James Place, the cul de sac where the Caple family lived, are gone. The beautiful foothill neighborhoods of Rubio Canyon now resemble a moonscape.
On Tuesday this week, I came across a crew from Pacific Gas and Electric that had traveled from Northern California to assist with the daunting task of restoring electrical infrastructure.
As it so happens, they were huddled in front of my former home on the corner of Calaveras Street and Marengo Avenue – or what’s left of it.
Having seen basically no one in the vacated neighborhood for several days, they were quite interested in what I had to say, as someone who actually knew the neighborhood.
“We’re just doing a job, but it means so much to hear from people for who this is personal, this is real,” one of the technicians said.
To be sure, Altadena will rise from the ashes. For some – or many – the question is what will replace the town we knew.
Altadena has long had a precious distinction as a somewhat offbeat but ultimately welcoming community free of judgment. When Black families of decades ago found themselves unable to buy homes in Pasadena and other nearby cities due to the cruelty of redlining, Altadena offered an opportunity to own a home. That’s almost certainly a key reason my family settled there.
Susan Hirasuna of Fox11 cited one estimate that put Black home ownership in West Altadena at upwards of 80 percent.
I fear current economic forces and the prohibitive real estate market are going to result in a town far less accessible to populations who were able to find purchase in Altadena – the quirky, the independent and future families looking for a place to start regardless of their status.
In one fell swoop, the generational wealth established by a scores of families has simply been wiped out.
In South Pasadena, when Japanese families were incarcerated during World War II, concerns were raised about “undesirables crowding into the homes vacated by alien Japanese.”
Despite having its “Caucasian race only” statutes invalidated via legal action, it was made clear to Japanese Americans returning from the camps that they were not welcome in South Pasadena and Pasadena.
In 2016, I interviewed longtime Altadena resident Calvin Tajima, who had fond memories of pre-war Pasadena. His father, Kengo, was a pastor at the Pasadena Union Church, and one of the great joys for the kids was established when chewing gum tycoon William Wrigley Jr., brought his Chicago Cubs to play spring exhibition games at Brookside Park.
“Pasadena was still pretty segregated back then,” Tajima recalled, explaining how Tuesday was “Minority Day” at the Brookside Park swimming pool. “That was the day before they cleaned the water each week.”
The Tajimas were fortunate enough to spend the bulk of the war years in the Chicago area, but when they and scores of other families tried to re-establish themselves in Pasadena, it was clear they were anything but welcome.
“There was so much prejudice and discrimination here, so we decided to go back to Chicago,” he said.
Eventually, he did return, this time to Altadena, where he and his wife Marie bought a small house in 1966 and raised a family. Theirs was not an unusual story, as many JA families put down roots in Altadena, particularly in the western side of town, alongside Black residents. Nurseries and small mom-and-pop stores were among the small businesses that popped up – some remain, like Johnny’s Sport Shop on North Lincoln Avenue.
Calvin’s daughter, Renee Tajima-Pe?a, has reported her parents’ house is still standing.
Before joining The Rafu, I worked as a long-term substitute teacher at John Muir High School, the alma mater of Dodgers legend Jackie Robinson. In cleaning out a storage closet one Saturday, I came across stacks of old attendance records, revealing a large percentage of students with Japanese surnames.
Change and evolution are inevitable for any community. It’s the natural course of things. But change is normally gradual, and what is coming is almost certainly a sudden and jarring reshaping of a community that I and so many have long embraced as a comfortable constant, a place we will always consider home, no matter where life has plunked us down over the years.
My longtime pal Miho Kato Tyszka still lives in Altadena, and not only was forced to evacuate her family last early Wednesday, but also her parents, now in their mid-90s. We have chatted several times over the last week. It’s clear we’re experiencing what we suspect a great many of our neighbors are feeling – that our shared history is inextricably lost forever.
“We are all shattered,” Miho said.
