Welcome guildsmen (with food)

Published 8:00 pm Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Come in from the fields, eat a hearty meal.

Rewarding labor with food is a tradition born of agrarian society and handed down through the millennia, about as direct a tie as there is between work performed and payment received. We’ve all got to keep the fires stoked for another day.

Islanders can honor that tradition over the next week or so, as master carpenters from the Timber Framers Guild apply their skills to an informational pavilion and two ornamental gates being constructed at “Nidoto Nai Yoni – Let it not Happen Again,” the Bainbridge Island Nikkei Exclusion Memorial at Pritchard Park. The design of the pavilion and gates will “echo” the memorial entry gate now located outside the Winslow Post Office, previously designed, built and donated by the guild.

Craftsmen from the non-profit guild are on the island through Sept. 30, and as laborers will, they need food to keep going. The memorial committee is seeking donations of prepared breakfasts, lunches and dinners to feed up to 20 craftsmen during the course of their stay. The value of the meals is eligible as a tax deductible contribution to the memorial project, organizers say. The American Legion Colin Hyde Post No. 172 has offered their hall to the guild members for breakfasts and meetings. Lunches will be eaten at the memorial site, and dinners may be consumed at the Legion Hall or at donating restaurants, and volunteers are available to deliver prepared meals.

Housing for the guild craftsmen is being provided by volunteers from the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community, the North Kitsap/Bainbridge Island Interfaith Council and the Bainbridge-Ometepe Sister Islands Association.

The pavilion and gate will be the first tangible monuments as the $5 million internment memorial goes in at the site of the Bainbridge internees’ 1942 departure. The Bainbridge Island Nikkei were the first of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans – two-thirds of them United States citizens – to be exiled from the West Coast. More than 114,000 were sent to internment camps, while others served in the U.S. military, were imprisoned and or simply moved away.

The memorial project has raised more than $2 million –

$1 million for land and $1 million for development, organizers say. The first phase of the project has seen construction of a entryway into Pritchard Park, a drop-off circle, several parking lots, wooden boardwalks and trails, and now the pavilion and gates. U.S. Reps. Jay Inslee (D-Bainbridge Island) and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) have introduced federal legislation that would designate the memorial as a satellite unit of the National Parks System.

The guild craftsmen were feted with a reception at City Hall last Friday evening. Anyone wishing to provide a meal or two as they continue their stay can contact Clarence Moriwaki (855-9038) or Linda Lemon (842-5699).

The craftsmen are honoring our community with their skills; let us offer them the fellowship of our tables in return.