How Bay Area family reclaimed its family’s priceless, historical Bibles
SAN JOSE — The brochure advertising Masuo Kitaji’s two family Bibles — hand illustrated, annotated and supplemented with Japanese transcription, done mostly during his World War II internment — highlighted their artistry and historical significance.
The 80-year-old Kitaji Bibles “stand as transcendent pieces of devotional art, historical documents of a still resonant period in American history and monuments to the power of faith over prejudice and oppression,” read the flyer for Swann Auction Galleries.
When they learned of the sale, Kitaji’s extended family, spread through California and beyond, was relieved to learn that their long-lost precious Bibles had resurfaced. Yet they were dumbstruck that their heirloom volumes — with a page listing all their names, birth dates and marriages — had mysteriously ended up in a private sale advertised for $85,000, a sum they certainly couldn’t afford.
Thanks to goodwill, perseverance and touches of fortune, the rediscovered Bibles will now be housed at the Hoover Institution’s fledgling Japanese Diaspora Collection, with their sole public showing Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Gilroy Museum.
“We were very happy,” said Laura Dominguez-Yon, 65, of San Jose, one of Kitaji’s 14 nieces and nephews, who spearheaded the quest to save the Bibles.
A teacher, healer and missionary of strong Christian faith, Masuo Kitaji taught his family everything from Genesis to jiu jitsu to table manners. They called him Uncle Captain for his rank in the Salvation Army. He asked the family to share his Bibles, which he called his life’s work, with other Christian ministries after his death.
Kitaji was born in 1897 in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, the oldest of nine children. His parents immigrated to California to work, leaving young Masuo in a Buddhist monastery where he was schooled in letters, art, music, martial arts, shiatsu and acupuncture.
At 17, he joined his parents in Watsonville, where they ran a general store. In the space of four years, he advanced from elementary to high school to college, studying art.
His life was transformed after a motorcycle crash in 1925. Salvation Army missionaries helped nurse him back to health, and he embraced their Christian faith, eventually converting most of his family. As a captain, he ran missions in San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Just before the war, he became engaged to a young Salvation Army officer in Japan, but it would be 21 years before Yuko Tsuruta could secure a visa to join Kitaji in California.
During World War II, Kitaji was imprisoned with other Japanese-Americans at the Poston, Arizona, internment camp. There, he focused on his devotional project. Using the New Analytical Indexed Bible, he painstakingly entered a Japanese transcription of each chapter and verse on facing blank pages.
He labored from 5 a.m. daily on what became a 3,000-page, 5½- inch-thick tome, using a magnifier to write in microscopic Japanese script. He added comments on sermons and history. He created fanciful maps of the Holy Land, a timeline of Old Testament prophets, a diagram of prayers and an illustration of the story of Jonah and the whale. He noted his anguish and worry over his fiance, trapped in wartime Japan.
Together, the Bibles “offer a perspective into Japanese-American art, religion and history,” said Kaoru “Kay” Ueda, curator of the Japanese Diaspora Collection. “They show a picture of people coming to a new culture and trying to make sense out of that.”
Brian Taba, 40, of San Jose, first saw his great-uncle’s work five months ago and said their artistry and significance hit home. “It’s amazing how few errors and cross-outs there were,” he said. “And the writing — it’s like zero point size.”
Dominguez-Yon thinks her uncle may have used needles to write.
After the war, Kitaji worked as caretaker at Gilroy Yamato Hot Springs, then a spa and resort. Finally joined by his bride in 1952, he began a second Bible a year later, although it was never completed. He died childless in 1973.
The Kitaji family had assumed that after the death of Kitaji’s widow in 1985, the Bibles had landed with another branch of the family. But the auction gallery reported that the Bibles had been found in a San Francisco-area recycling bin, and a consignor had put them up for sale.
The Kitajis learned indirectly in late February about the Bibles’ private sale from a non-profit group that had been invited to bid on the books. The group, which does not want to be identified, believed it unethical to profit from internment-camp artifacts and contacted others who had successfully protested a 2015 auction of art created by camp internees.
In that episode, it took a national campaign, joined by celebrities, to persuade the Rago Arts and Auction Center in New Jersey to halt its sale of internment art acquired by historian Allen Eaton. The items ended up at the Japanese-American National Museum in Los Angeles.
Advised by Rago-protest veterans, and aided by attorney Don Tamaki of San Francisco, the Kitajis hired lawyers and asked Swann Galleries to suspend the sale. Swann quickly agreed.
In six weeks, they negotiated an amicable resolution. Family members contributed and raised funds to cover the acquisition. The terms of the sale are confidential.
“I am very pleased to learn that they are being made available to the public, which seems in keeping with Kitaji’s wishes,” said Rick Stattler of Swann Galleries.
California State Parks donated services to digitize the books, creating 5,000 images.
Meanwhile, Dominguez-Yon serendipitously met Ueda of Stanford, and the family arranged for the Diaspora Collection to house the Bibles and make them digitally available to the public.
The Kitajis now are focusing on integrating the story of the Bibles into the restoration of Gilroy Yamato Hot Springs, part of Henry Coe State Park, including restoring the captain’s cabin and church.
“The captain would have been tremendously flattered by this objective appreciation of his life’s work,” Taba said. “It’s a miracle they weren’t destroyed.”
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