These original words from Alice Naka, the wife of world-renowned bonsai master John Naka, were sent to former NBF President Felix Laughlin by Vaughn Banting, a former NBF member. Alice gave permission for the sharing of this text, written decades ago. Click here for more on Naka’s legacy as a bonsai artist, leader and friend.
John Naka was the third child born to Kakichi and Yukino Naka. Leaving his wife and two older children, a son and daughter in Japan, John’s father came to America alone to find his fortune. A few years later, John’s mother came to Colorado to join her husband, bringing only the other son with her. The daughter stayed in Japan with her grandparents.
John was born the following year, Aug. 16, 1914 – 18 years younger than his brother. Spoiled? Not yet. Several years later, another sister and brother were born. His childhood was spent like most normal boys on a farm – Tom Sawyer style. John’s mother was one of the first women to come to America, so a small child was a novelty to many of his father’s friends, and they all pampered him.
When John was 8 years old, his father, being an only son, had to return to Japan to take care of John’s widowed grandfather. They took the three younger children with them, leaving the eldest who was married in Colorado. Another sister was born several years later.
When I met John, he had returned to Colorado to live with his brother after spending 13 years in Japan. It was during those years he spent with his grandfather that he was introduced to bonsai. After we were married, we spent 10 years in Colorado. The summer months were spent working hard to make a living on the farm, but the winter months were a time to rest. I remember many a snowy day John would sit in front of a large window sketching. Even then, he enjoyed sketching trees, and they always seemed to have large trunks. I believe they were cottonwood trees.
After several years of fighting late springs and early frost, plus several hail storms during the summer, we decided we had had enough farming. We packed up, shipped our belongings and moved to Los Angeles with our three boys.
Almost immediately after we arrived, John became friends with bonsai instructor Sam Takekichi Doi, who introduced him to Frank Fusaji Nagata, Ai Okumura and Morihei Furuya. Joseph Tsuneji Yamashiro, whom we met in Colorado during the war, just happened to move next door to us with his family. The five became very close friends and spent all their time talking and working with bonsai. They became the original founders of the California Bonsai Society.
John lived and breathed bonsai during those years – every spare moment was spent snooping around the nurseries. In those days, he could talk the owners into selling him some “stunted or deformed” trees for a cheaper price.
Our three boys kept growing, and at the time we had two in junior high school. One of the boys’ teachers, who was also interested in trees, told John about some small junipers he had seen growing in the desert. Off they went, and John saw for the first time these magnificent trees only a few feet tall but gnarled and twisted unlike anything he had seen in the local nurseries. Well, that was the beginning of a weekly trek to the valley of junipers for the next 25 years.
I became a bonsai widow. John and I even had an understanding that, if I called him for dinner and he didn’t come in, it meant that he couldn’t stop what he was doing, and the boys and I were to start eating without him. We ate many meals without him. He developed a “cat’s tongue” and even now hates food that is too hot. The thing that amazes me is that he can still remember a tree that he saw many years ago and describe it in minute detail, but he will fly to Tucson and forget his plane ticket on the dashboard or drive all the way to Rancho Santa Fe for a class on the wrong day.
The one incident I remember so well is when he took me along to pick up his bonsai after displaying them in a show. He loaded up all his bonsai and, while I was visiting with Jack and Nellie Catlin, he took off and left me. John says he realized he forgot me about halfway home, but I just know he didn’t miss me until after he unloaded his trees.
He has been a person who turned his hobby into lifetime work and has really enjoyed it. Bonsai has been good to John. Because of bonsai, he has had the opportunity to travel both here in the United States and in many foreign countries. He has many friends throughout the country for whom he is grateful, and now he is looking forward to seeing some American trees in a special home at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C.
As he walks up and down the aisle of trees in his backyard with his dog at his heels, he is a happy man, because spring always comes for John.