One by one, students at TLC Child and Family Services center near Sebastopol approached the center of their garden and planted wispy strawberry plants in the rich soil.
With every plant, they buried notes on tiny strips of paper, their "intentions" for the future.
"This is our circle, our wishes, our hopes, our community - and soon to be our harvest," teacher Sharry Simpson said.
Underlying the nonprofit center's annual spring celebration is the deep historical connection to the land TLC is cultivating.
Just off Gravenstein Highway, the center was formerly Twin Pines Ranch, an apple farm run by Elizabeth Lea Perry and her husband, Joseph, in the early 1900s. Several Japanese immigrants also farmed nearby.
During World War II, the Perrys saw several of their Japanese neighbors ordered to leave their land and shipped off to internment camps.
Lea Perry vowed to keep her neighbors' farms operating, and she kept a 4-inch-thick binder of the income, taxes, insurance papers and letters she wrote the interned families. Many of the families returned to their farms after years in camps.
On Wednesday, her son, Tom Perry, helped plant a California lilac tree in the center of the strawberry patch at TLC, reinforcing the land's connection from past to future.
"Grow well," he said.
"I'm so proud of my parents for what they did," said Perry, who now lives in Santa Rosa. "They said, 'They're our friends.' It didn't make any difference that the war was going on.
He said his mother, "a feisty woman," took some heat for helping people perceived as the enemy.
"She was called a 'Jap-lover' by a few people," he said.
TLC annually serves more than 500 children, young adults and families with foster care, adoption services, group homes, transitional housing, counseling and schooling.
The students recently learned about Japanese internment camps and their center's connection with that history.
Staff social worker Scott Matsuura brought his parents to Wednesday's celebration. Both Ken and Nancy Matsuura were born in internment camps.
"For the (Perry) family to take care of two farms was highly unusual," Ken Matsuura said. "You don't hear too many stories like that."
TLC staff announced Wednesday they are naming the administration building in honor of the Perry family.
Therapist Anna Richmond said, "We want the whole history to remain here for years and years to come."
(You can reach Staff Writer Lori A. Carter at 762-7297 or lori.carter@pressdemocrat.com.)
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: