​Celebrating Sonoma County’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities

By Bo Simons of our Becoming Beloved Community Ministry Team

May blooms into Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) month. Over 24 million Americans, or 7.3% of the U.S. population, are AAPI. Sonoma County boasts 24,670 AAPI residents (4.9%). AAPI is an inclusive label that comprises over 50 ethnic groups speaking over 100 languages, with connections to Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, Hawaiian, and other Asian and Pacific Islander ancestries. Not only do we have a number of AAPI members in our parish, Incarnation has a smile-making historic institutional connection. When our church gave up the Episcopal Tea Room at the Sonoma County Fair after 44 years of successful fund-raising and outreach in 1979, we passed the torch to the Japanese American Citizens League and the Emanji Buddhist Temple of Sebastopol to occupy, staff and make money from the Tea House restaurant Incarnation had built at the Fairgrounds. They started serving their crowd-pleasing teriyaki chicken, prompting Gaye LeBaron’s snappy headline: "That's FUNNY, you don't LOOK Episcopalian!"

Sonoma County’s AAPI history stretches back to the Chinese laborers who built railroads and became involved in the first California large-scale commercial winemaking enterprise, Agoston Haraszthy’s Buena Vista in Sonoma. There Chinese workers built the stone winery, cleared the land, planted thousands of acres of vine, and dug the wine caves. Haraszthy said he liked Chinese laborers because they were hard workers and did not drink wine. Most of all he liked that they worked for $8 a month when European-American workers wanted $60 a month. The dark side of Sonoma AAPI history features not only economic exploitation but also anti-Asian sentiment resulting in the ethnic cleansing of almost all Chinese residents from Sonoma County in the 1870’s and 1880’s.

Japanese immigrants became another Asian force in Sonoma County as agricultural laborers and then farmers. A Samurai prince, Kanaya Nagasawa was progenitor of many AAPI people at the top of the wine business when he was the proprietor of the Fountaingrove winery from the 1880’s until his death in 1934.

Today AAPI Sonomans fill the top ranks in many fields. In education Ming Tung “Mike” Lee, the President of SSU, began his tenure in 2022, while Frank Chong, highly honored SRJC Chancellor retired in 2023. Sonoma County AAPI painters and sculptors include Ruth Asawa whose sculptures grace public spaces and Kelly Autumn, a talented visual artist and multidisciplinary printmaker. In food and wine sectors, the list includes Mason Lin who runs numerous Sonoma County restaurants. Ken Tominaga reigns as chef and owner of Hana Japanese. Anisya Fritz founded Lynmar Estate Winery with her husband in Sebastopol. Akiko Freeman, born and raised in Tokyo, founded Freeman Vineyard & Winery with her husband in 2001. Many literary Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders stand out, but the literary origin story of Amy Tan’s (The Joy Luck Club) is a winner: “At age eight, I wrote an essay, ‘Why I love the Library’ and sent it in to a contest. I won my first prize, a transistor radio, and the honor of having my essay and photo published in the Press Democrat. This convinced me that writing could be a rewarding and lucrative experience and so I took up reading the thesaurus, in addition to fairy tales.”