Kiyoko Kanaya was a member of Bothell United Methodist Church and was incarcerated with her family at Tule Lake Relocation Center from July 20, 1942 through March 9, 1946.

 

Kiyoko Kanaya joined Bothell Community Methodist Church (as it was then called) on June 14, 1931. She was eleven years old at the time of her confirmation, and a sixth-grader at Bothell Elementary School. She graduated from Redmond High School in 1938.

 

The eight member Kanaya family was living on Morris Road in “Hollywood” (now Woodinville) in 1940, where the family grew fruit and vegetables that they sold at their “Bothell Market” near the corner of WA State 522 and Bothell-Everett Highway.

 

On May 20, 1942, eleven families of Japanese ancestry—thirty-seven people in total from the Bothell-Woodinville area—were evicted from their homes due to President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. The Kanaya family was one of these families. None of them would ever return to the area.

 

Kiyoko and her family were subsequently incarcerated at Tule Lake “Relocation Center” on July 20, 1942. Her mother Mitsuko died in the camp on December 4, 1944.

 

On March 9, 1946, Kiyoko and her father were released from Tule Lake. They were among the very last to leave the camp. Kiyoko was born July 9, 1920 and died January 14, 1999 in San Mateo, CA.

 

Long-time Bothell United Methodist Church member Dick Rehbock was a 2nd and 3rd grade classmate of Kimio, Kiyoko’s younger brother. And amazingly, BUMC member Mavis (Loiselle) Kreizenbeck grew up in Tule Lake, where her mother delivered mail to the “Relocation Camp.” Interestingly, by October 1942 the Tule Lake “Japanese post office staff refused to handle mail” in opposition to labor conditions.

 

There is a commemorative brick in honor of Kiyoko Kanaya Fujiki (#2301; column 74, row 22) on the NVC Foundation Japanese American Memorial Wall in downtown Seattle, and a “Kanaya Room” at McMenamin’s Anderson School in downtown Bothell.

 

Bothell United Methodist Church plans to dedicate the large, beautiful Japanese maple near the west entrance to the church to the Kanaya family on March 9, 2026, the 80th anniversary of Kiyoko’s release from Tule Lake. Descendants of the Kanaya family will attach a bronze plaque to the railroad tie retaining wall beneath the tree, commemorating Kiyoko—and by extension her parents and siblings, and their descendants.

 

Although the Japanese maple was likely planted in June 1985 when the BUMC Fellowship Hall was completed, it seems fitting, in these perilous times, to dedicate this beautiful tree to the memory of this local family.