In 1928, the Yoshida family immigrated to SLO County from Japan, settling at a farmstead near Point Buchon just between Montaña de Oro State Park and Avila Beach. They raised 10 children and farmed fresh greens on the property.
But by 1942, the Yoshidas were forced off the land under Executive Order 9066, which ordered the evacuation and mandatory incarceration of all Japanese and Japanese Americans during the second World War.
According to Cal Poly Professor and archaeologist Terry Jones, the Yoshidas never returned to their homestead after the war because the property was sold once they were forced out.
Since then, Jones said the family’s story and belongings had remained buried and untouched, until about a year ago when Cal Poly anthropology students excavated and studied the artifacts left at the old farmstead. The students did it with the help of living relatives of the Yoshida family right alongside them.
One of the things that I learned is that Japanese American families seem to all have stories about what happened to them, and they pass those stories down from generation to generation. We had four generations of the Yoshidas there for the excavation and they really felt this deep connection to this particular parcel, to the place where their parents, grandparents, great grandparents lived,” Jones said. “It was especially emotional for them and for us really, because of that particularly unfortunate history—that’s not even a strong enough word.”
With a team of 25 students in the Cal Poly Archaeological Laboratory Methods course and 33 descended family members, the group got to work in spring 2024, slowly digging up artifacts like children’s toys, ceramics, and fish bones, telling stories of the farmstead, and preparing the beloved items for display at the History Center of San Luis Obispo County.
Jones said a project like this is the first of its kind for the university.
“We had a student one time develop a display at the History Center, but we’ve never done a project that went from excavation to post-field to interpretation in a display. This is unprecedented for us,” he said.
Fourth-year anthropology and geography major Lacy May worked on the Yoshida family excavation project since the beginning.
“I had really wanted something hands-on, so I immediately was like, ‘Yes, please sign me up,'” she said.
What she didn’t expect was all the emotion that would come with working directly with the Yoshida family.
“We got to interview all of the Yoshidas, and their presence in the field was really emotional. They brought paper cranes that they had made for each of their original family members that lived there and painted rocks with their English name on one side and their Japanese name on the other, and we put them back in the site whenever we backfilled it,” May said. “There were definitely tears shed a couple times that weekend because it was so impactful for them to be able to come back.”
First year graduate student of higher education, counseling, and student affairs Collin Marfia participated in the excavation during his last quarter as an undergraduate and said that, lucky for him, he got to stay on the project.
“It’s pretty much all manual physical labor, using shovels, pickaxes, and working very methodically,” he said. “While many people don’t think it is, archeology is a science, you don’t just kind of pick an area and start digging and see what you find. We have to do specific sizes, … you work in specific depth.”
Marfia also felt the emotional significance of the project. When he found out the project would continue after the spring quarter, he enrolled in the course again, even though it wouldn’t go toward his current master’s studies.
“I’m just very thankful to have gotten to stay on this and because it’s not something I imagined would have been continuing this long, but just the experience of being out there in the field with the family and getting to see how much it meant to them made it mean so much more to me,” Marfia said.
The students processed more than 1,000 objects from the Yoshida property, which are now on display at the History Center at 696 Monterey St. until Aug. 3.
Fast fact
• Lumina Alliance announced the opening of the first transitional housing site in North San Luis Obispo County for survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. There will be a celebratory ribbon cutting ceremony on June 25 in Paso Robles. For more information visit luminaalliance.org. ∆
Reach Staff Writer Libbey Hanson at lhanson@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Winning Images 2025.