Memorial Park

 Memorial Park is a small triangle of Green Space located on Main Street across from St Patrick’s Church in downtown Watsonville.  Memorial Park consists of a large granite rock that says we will not forget and a flagpole.  In 2021 when Caltrans was putting out the bid for contractors to improve the 152 corridor, they decided to spend some money on a percentage for the Arts.  Community Arts and Empowerment was selected to do five sidewalk medallions, two of which would be located in Memorial Park.

The images selected for Memorial Park are memorializing two groups of people who have experienced hardship in Watsonville. The first one is for the Tobera Project.  The Tobera Project Tensions escalated as 500-white men armed with pistols and clubs roamed the streets of Watsonville in an act of mob violence in a five-day stretch towards the end of January in 1930. The malicious act consisted of assaulting and beating Filipino farm workers who they claimed stole their jobs and their women. The Race Riot culminated in the shooting and killing of Fermin Tobera who was shot dead while sleeping in a San Juan Road labor camp.  It is a terrible and sad chapter in the history of Watsonville and one that we must never forget. To learn more about this story please follow this link: The Tobera Project

The second image comes from the playbill of the play “White Skies Falling Dragon” written by Steve Wong. Steve “Spike” Wong is the descendant of Chinese-American immigrants,  his play is about the return home of a Chinese American young man from his World War II service as a bombardier in the US Army Air Force. Inspired by Spike’s own father, Captain Ernest Wong, USAAF, the story follows his struggle to be an American in a traditional Chinese home, with the emotional difficulty of striving to overcome tragedy during his last mission of the war. In order to begin healing, he must accept one culture in order to gain the other, wherein a secret from the past holds the key to his future. To learn more about the story, please follow this link: “White Skies Falling Dragon”