A couple of weekends ago I went for a walk in Greenwood Cemetery with my wife and son. Greenwood is Spokane's Victorian-era park cemetery, a gorgeous place of stately headstones, rolling manicured lawns, and soaring Ponderosa pines. After convincing my son that he could not, in fact, stay in the car, we all enjoyed a perfect spring day among the dead.
One of the spots that has always fascinated me at Greenwood is the Japanese section of the cemetery. Spokane had a prominent and successful
Japanese community from the late 1800s to the present. The early Japanese headstones are shaped differently than other markers of that time period, most are small obelisks with vertical Kanji lettering:
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| Japanese headstones at Greenwood Cemetery |
One headstone, however, was different from the rest. Shaped more like a western headstone, it had a lot of writing. Clearly there is more than a name and some dates here, it appeared to be some kind of story. But what does it say?
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Headstone of Tadajiro Muramatsu |
Michael, one of my coworkers at the Washington State Archives speaks some Japanese. I showed him this picture. He could not make it out,but thought his wife Jun might be able to read it. According to her, the Kanji lettering is of a type that has not been used for a hundred years in Japan. Fortunately she had studied this style of lettering in college. She did a literal translation of the headstone, which her husband then rendered into something more like American English. Here is her translation:
His name was Tadajiro Muramatsu. He was born on September 24, 1875 in Ueno village, Nishi-Yatsusiro county, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. For generations, his family engaged in farming. He was easy-going, enjoyed drinking, and had many friends. He loved ancient poems and would recite them when he was drunk. He came to the United States in 1905, moved to S city in 1906, and started the laundry business. He was a pioneer in the business. He set an example by working hard and by serving the public through his 20 some years of career. He received a special award from the business club for his work. Unfortunately, he lost his life in fire in UNKNOWN town passing the train bridge on April 7, 1918. He was 43 years old. He married a woman from the Aoki family, and they had a boy named Tadao. This tomb was built in his memory and on it, his over all life story was told. January 7, 1919 Tadao built this
Jun also noted: "--- S city probably refers to Spokane from the usage of the character. The third sentence from the last goes as follows, word-by-word: 'He met passing gate mansion town UNKNOWN skin railed road metal bridge pass touch fire ring not happy UNKNOWN.' Probably lose- life 'passing gate mansion town' is probably one word, referring a name of the town."
Here is Michael's Americanization of the text:
Tadajiro Muramatsu was born on September 24, 1875 in Ueno village, Nishi-Yatsusiro county, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. For generations, his family engaged in farming. He was easy-going, enjoyed drinking, and had many friends. He loved ancient poems and would recite them when he had been drinking. He came to the United States in 1905, moved to S city (Spokane?) in 1906, and started a laundry business. He was a pioneer in the business. He set an example by working hard and by serving the public through his career of 20 some years. He received a special award from the business club for his work. Unfortunately, he lost his life in a fire in UNKNOWN town passing the train bridge on April 7, 1918. He was 43 years old. He married a woman from the Aoki family, and they had a boy named Tadao. This tomb was built in his memory and on it, his overall life story was told. January 7, 1919 Tadao built this tomb.
A 1913
Guide to the Spokane Japanese Business Men and their Enterprises Photograph Album lists Muramatsu under the alternate spelling of Chujiro Muramatsu and tells us the name of his business: Oriental Baths and Laundry. According to the Washington State Archives, Digital Archives, Muramatsu died on
April 7, 1918 in Spokane. He was 42.
Having the date give us a starting point for doing newspaper research. How exactly was Muramatsu killed? A search through the Spokesman Review for
April 8 reveals the grisly truth--and explains what the Muramatsu's son was trying to describe when he carved "skin railed road metal bridge pass touch fire ring not happy" on his father's headstone:
Muramatsu's son Tadao would have been in his teens or twenties when his father was killed. Eight month later the bereaved young man carved his father's headstone.
I would love to follow this story further. The Japanese business directory almost certainly has a photograph of Muramatsu. City directories should pinpoint his address and the location of his Oriental Baths and Laundry, And finally a quick Google reveals a number of Muramatsus in Spokane still, I wonder if there are family stories about this ancestor of theirs, so lovingly memorialized in Greenwood Cemetery.
