Asian/Pacific-American Heritage Month

Since its opening in 1977, The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach has been a center for Japanese arts and culture in South Florida, with rotating exhibitions in its galleries, tea ceremonies performed monthly in its Seishin-an tea house, an educational outreach program with local schools and organizations, and Japanese traditional festivals celebrated for the public several times a year.

Photographs below of George Morikami as Young Man (courtesy of Florida Memory) and as donor of the land for the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens (courtesy of Morikami Museum).

"Loading crated tomatoes at Kobayashi farm"

Credit: Image courtesy of Florida Memory 

Citizens of Japan arrived in the Boca Raton area in the early 1900s to start an agricultural colony, specializing in raising and selling pineapples. Read more about their history, prosperity and subsequent required vacating of their properties in the 1940s during World War II.

The "Spanish River Papers" as published by the Boca Raton Historical Society, document more of the history of the colony of "Yamato," including transcriptions of old letters.

October 1977   

February 1980

Spring 1985

Other accounts of this tight-knit Japanese community can be also be found at:

The Smart Set (Drexel University)

Yamato Colony (Florida Memory)