Description
Paul Yorishige Watanabe served at several Southern California Japanese American churches in the 1920s and 1930s, including
the Los Angeles Japanese Baptist Church (now Evergreen Baptist Church) and the Fundamental Baptist Mission to the Japanese.
This is a collection of notes for 66 different sermons used by Watanabe.
Background
Paul Y. Watanabe was born in 1886 in Gifu, Japan. After being orphaned when his parents were killed in an earthquake, he was
reared in a Christian orphanage. In 1907, he was encouraged by missionaries to go to the United States to study. He initially
lived in San Francisco, where he stayed for two years. He indicates that due to the large number of Japanese-speakers in the
city, he was unable to effectively learn English. Consequently, he deliberately left the West Coast for the Midwest and then
later the south. He eventually graduated from both high school and college in Texas, and he completed one year of graduate
study at Yale University. After preaching throughout Asia for a year in 1920, he returned to California and was ordained in
Gardena.
Extent
1.0 linear feet (2 boxes)
Restrictions
All requests for permission to publish, reproduce, or quote from materials in this collection must be submitted to the Hirasaki
National Resource Center at the Japanese American National Museum (collections@janm.org).
Availability
By appointment only.
Please Contact the Collections Management and Access Unit by email (collections@janm.org) or telephone (213-830-5615).