There once was a girl who sat in a tree.

From a rural village on Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese island, her childhood saw World War II’s bombs drop across her homeland. She saw a nation change, culturally disrupted by war.

Don’t be fooled: This story is about a gate. One that stood for 50 years and seemingly disappeared from a public park in the mid-’80s. This story is one that weaves through at least 100 years of American history.

But to appreciate the story and its ending, sometimes it’s best to go back to the beginning.

Before the girl in a tree was born, halfway around the world, the city of Seattle bought a 300-acre park.

And while the Olmsted Brothers architectural firm had put to paper in 1903 the designs for what’s now known as Seward Park, the city wouldn’t purchase the forested peninsula for $322,000 until 1911.

That same year was the city’s first Golden Potlatch, the ancestral celebration of Seattle’s iconic summer festival, Seafair.

Originally celebrating the wealth the Klondike Gold Rush brought to Seattle, the Potlatch hit a lull, suspended by World War I, after just a few summers.

The war “transformed the city’s shipbuilding industry,” according to Seattle’s historical records, and in 1917 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished the Lake Washington Ship Canal.

Seattle in the early 1900s was a boom with annexations and development that literally reshaped its landscape. Infrastructure, like transcontinental railroads, “reinforced the city’s position as a trade and shipping center, particularly with Asia and the North Pacific,” according to the city’s records.

‘Gateway to the Orient’

There once was a gate that stood as a symbol of friendship.

In 1934, the Potlatch festival finally resumed, this time promoting international trade.

In that spirit, the Potlatch committee reached out to the Seattle Japanese Chamber of Commerce, which commissioned a traditional Japanese gate, called a “torii.” It would be displayed on University Street during the festival.

In Japan, the torii usually marks the entrance of a sacred place. In America, the torii is more a representation of Japan and its culture.

One of Seattle’s first Asian architects, Allen Kichio Arai, sketched the original torii in 1934. For $2, he sold that sketch, which would guide carpenter Kichisaburo Ishimitsu in its construction at the Japanese Language School.

An inscribed sign hung from its center crosspiece: “Seattle — America’s Gateway to the Orient.”

After the festival, the chamber gave the 26-foot gate to the city as a sign of goodwill and friendship, according to an interview with Karen O’Brien, an archivist with the Rainier Valley Historical Society, in a Seward Park torii documentary.

The original torii stood in Seward Park in Seattle from 1935 until the city of Seattle removed it sometime in the mid-80s, when it was ruled a hazard due its decay, according to Friends of Seward Park. — Seattle archives/www.clerk.seattle.gov/

The torii was disassembled after the fair and put at the entrance of Seward Park in 1935, though recovered photos from its life there suggest the sign did not follow it to the park.

It accompanied an assortment of Japanese gifts, including hundreds of Japanese cherry trees, the first three of which were planted in 1929 by Japanese diplomats passing through on their way to an arms limitation conference in London, according to the documentary.

Camps in America

There once was a boy who watched as all the adults gathered around the radio.

It was December 7, 1941 — the day the United States formally entered World War II.

After Pearl Harbor, wartime panic drove the U.S. government to forcibly relocate more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry, including American citizens, living on the Pacific coast to Japanese internment camps.

The Seward Park torii architect and carpenter both ended up at the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho.

The torii, though, survived war-time animosity, which Friends of Seward Park President Paul Talbert says is a testimony to the gate’s appreciation in the nearby neighborhood.

The war ended in 1945, though U.S. troops remained in Japan, first as part of the Allied occupation.

That boy, whose first childhood memory was Pearl Harbor, is by now a young man in the U.S. Air Force.

Mike Forrester is his name.

As he set out into the world, his grandmother’s voice, “Don’t bring back a Japanese bride,” rang in his ears.

It had been about 10 years since the war ended. While most of the airmen were being sent to Korea, he was the only person in his class assigned to Japan.

Japanese war bride

“At the time, getting involved with an American serviceman was very risky for any Japanese girl. Doing so virtually eliminated any prospect of her ever marrying a Japanese man,” Mike wrote in his 2005 memoir, “Tsuchino: My Japanese War Bride.” “A Japanese girl abandoned by an American serviceman could usually look forward to a life of spinsterhood, or at worst, prostitution.”

When he left for Japan in the 1950s, he said he was not looking for marriage. But not long after arriving he met Tsuchino, the fearless young woman who would rather be in a tree than on the ground.

“Her eyes had a hint of sadness that drew me to her,” he wrote.

Tsuchino didn’t like Mike — at least not right off.

“Tsuchino considered me to be arrogant and she was right,” he wrote.

In Japan, the exchange rate lent to Mike feeling “rich” in the “primitive” county.

“For young GIs, Japan was the ideal duty assignment,” he wrote.

Mike finally convinced Tsuchino to go on a date, eventually courting her and then asking her to marry him — she said no.

He worked hard for several weeks to change her mind.

Then, despite being stationed in Japan two years, he was shipped back to the states. That order came within a week of asking the Air Force if he could marry Tsuchino, Mike wrote.

He promised to return and to write her every day he was gone.

“I don’t know if she believed me but suspect that she did not,” he wrote.

And he did. Every day, for four months, starting in Tokyo on his 10-day journey from Japan to the U.S.

He even smuggled a diamond engagement ring into a make-up kit he mailed her, an effort to show her he was determined to return. This was two months into the letter-writing campaign, still without a breath of response from his beloved.

He explained his plan in another letter — legally sending the ring would require paying a 100 percent tax on the item, something he couldn’t afford.

The ring made it, thanks to a busted cream that presumably led inspectors to dismiss the package.

Not long after that, Tsuchino wrote Mike for the first time.

Thanks to his family’s political connections, Mike was shipped back overseas. He had one day before reporting to his new post, and he spent it traveling to Tsuchino’s village.

He found her there, up in a tree.

“From her vantage point it was possible to see me coming from quite a distance away,” he wrote. “Since I was in uniform, and Americans were rarely seen walking around this village, I was not hard to spot.”

They married three times in 1958, once at the Shinto shrine, then at the American Consulate and finally in the Catholic Church.

“In all our travels we did not encounter any significant amount of racism or discrimination,” Mike wrote, reflecting back on his life with Tsuchino. “We have overcome adversity and hardship. She has been my support and constant companion. Most of all she has been my best friend.”

After a lifetime

The torii gate stood in Seward Park for 50 years, welcoming people at its entrance, overlooking a now-grassy meadow and beach, which was only revealed when the completion of the 1917 Lake Washington Ship Canal lowered the lake’s water level.

It persevered, through the cultural mistrust and hate brewed in the second world war, even when its creators were shipped off to American encampments.

It endured until it seemingly disappeared in the mid-’80s, leaving nothing but its concrete, moss-covered base behind.

The concrete base, the only thing remaining from the torii gate, which stood in Seward Park in Seattle from 1935 until it was removed sometime in the mid-1980s. — Megan Campbell/staff photo

No plaque reminds passers-by of its once-towering presence or history. It’s not obvious it was ever there, its remnants tucked under bushes, nestled beneath trees.

“It’s kind of sad,” Tsuchino said from her Sammamish home.

It’s 2016.

Mike, her husband of 58 years, sat across from her. Just a moment ago, he held her hand as she walked down the few steps leading to their living room, where they discussed the torii, its relevance and their connection to it.

He remembers seeing the gate in the ’70s, with Tsuchino, though she admittedly disagrees, shaking her head, making pointed comments about his aged memory. They taunt each other like this, laughing all the while.

Either way, Mike said they were “surprised” when they recently read a news article that reported the torii had been removed.

They reached out to Friends of Seward Park, a volunteer group looking to raise $300,000 to replace the onetime symbol of international trade and, later, symbol of friendship.

“History defines who we are,” Mike said. “It’s too important to lose.”

The couple, the second largest donor to the Seward Park Torii Project, donated 1,000 Starbucks stock, which is valued at around $58,000.

“It’s a good cause,” Mike said. “It’s something that’s going to endure.”

The Forresters, now both in their 80s, do not have children, which, as Mike wrote in his memoir, is their “biggest sorrow.”

At their age, he said they wanted to find something to invest in, something that will have a lasting effect.

“Once you’re gone no one knows you’ve been here unless you do good,” he said.

Their donation brings the torii project funding to 80 percent, Friends’ president Paul Talbert said.

With any luck, the Forresters’ hope their contribution will bring awareness to the project to finally replace the torii.

Ted Weinberg’s painting of the new torii concept, which would be placed in Seattle’s Seward Park. — Photo courtesy of Friends of Seward Park

For more information on the Seward Park torii or to donate, visit www.sewardparktorii.org.