Auburn Japanese Return, Clean Up Pioneer Cemetery

[Photo caption]: Frank Natsuhara at Grave of Angeline Seattle. He swept leaves off the tombstone.

By A STAFF CORRESPONDENT

AUBURN, Nov. 13.--Native-born Japanese returning to their homes after a wartime dislocation are doing a commendable service here by cleaning up the long-neglected Auburn Pioneer Cemetery.

The triangular acre plot on the north outskirts of town was knee-deep with brush and grass when Frank Natsuhara, 35 years old, and others of his family "came back." Part of the cemetery contains two orderly rows of cement headstones over the graves of Japanese. The remainder is the resting place of many of the first white persons to settle here.

Natsuhara today swept maple leaves from under old trees which give the cemetery a park-like appearance. He commented on vandalism during the war.

Some Stones Stolen

Some of the Japanese headstones had been knocked over or stolen.

"The headstone over my sister's grave is gone," said Natsuhara, who was born here. "Many others are gone."

He pointed to a group of five graves in which a mother and four children rest, all victims of a Japanese father who murdered them a decade ago. The mother's headstone is gone.

Vandals did not confine their depredations to the Japanese. The monument to one of the pioneer Faucetts is broken to bits. And a sandstone monument to Angeline Seattle, Indian wife of John Seattle, said to have been related to Chief Seattle, Indian wife of John Seattle, said to have been related to Chief Seattle, has been upset. She died in 1907, when she was 75.

Many Graves Unmarked

This Angeline Seattle is not to be confused with Chief Seattle's daughter, long known to pioneers as Princess Angeline, who died in 1896 and is buried in Lake View Cemetery, near Volunteer Park, in Seattle.

Natsuhara said many graves in the plot are unmarked because wooden headstones have rotted away. These are graves of pioneers. The Japanese carefully have replaced wooden markers with concrete stones.

Arthur C. Ballard, whose father, the late Levi W. Ballard, owned much of the property now a part of Auburn, said vandalism in the Pioneer Cemetery has been repeated in the community's newer burial place, Mountain View."

"Tombstones of some of our oldest and most respected settlers have been broken up," Ballard said.