(warm music) (spirited music) - [Nathaniel] This building is living and breathing history.

- [Rev.

Thompson] The transformation from the temple to the brewery, it goes back to the idea of impermanence, right?

That nothing is going to last forever.

- I think a brewery and a Buddhist temple are similar in bringing the community and people together.

- [Sakaguchi] That's why it's good that it's the brew pub, because there's a lot of drinking that went on in that church basement, I tell ya.

(chuckles) - All the men folk would just disappear, but you know they'd be downstairs, 'cause you could hear them laughing.

- This community, it's the people all getting together.

That's essentially what I think a church should be is a sense of belonging to something.

Essentially that's what they've done with this brew pub.

- [Andrea] A lot of the first timers come in and they're like, "What did this used to be?"

And I said, "Well, it was an old Buddhist temple built back in the 1940s."

And their expression lights up.

In order to turn something, like a Buddhist temple into a brewery, I think people think that it couldn't have been a better fit, honestly.

- [Male Announcer] This program was made possible by the History Colorado State Historical Fund.

- [Female Announcer] Supporting projects throughout the state to preserve, protect and interpret Colorado's architectural and archeological treasures.

History Colorado State Historical Fund.

Create the future, honor the past.

- [Male Announcer] With additional funding provided in memory of Deanna E. La Camera, by Hassell and Marianne Ledbetter, and by members like you.

Thank you.

With special thanks to the Denver Public Library, History Colorado and the Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media.

(gentle music) (soft music) - [Narrator] The Brighton Buddhist Temple tells the story of Japanese Americans in Colorado and speaks to all of the migrant settlers who were in search of community.

- [Wei] Japanese immigrants began arriving in the United States and therefore Colorado, beginning in 1890.

- [Asakawa] Like the Chinese a lot of Japanese started getting railroad jobs which took them inland.

- [Wei] So the first generation, referred to as the Issei, was fortunate enough to give birth to the Nisei, or the second generation.

And these folks would find their way throughout the interior West.

- [Narrator] During the early 20th century, migrants from all over sought to make Colorado home.

Black homesteaders from the South and Midwest settled in experimental farming communities like Dearfield and The Dry.

Agricultural opportunities also brought immigrants from Mexico, France and Canada to farm along the waterways of the front range.

The expansion of coal mining brought immigrants from Italy, Germany, Russia, and Japan.

- [Asakawa] In Colorado, the Japanese found mining jobs and they also found farming jobs.

They started farming.

Like the grand history of immigration.

People come here for work for a better life.

- The Japanese who immigrated to the United States were predominantly peasants and as agriculturalists naturally, they were prepared and suited to work in the agricultural sector.

- [Narrator] As they made their journey to Colorado's farming lands, the Japanese carried little more with them than their skills and religion.

- [Asakawa] Buddhism is the main kind of religion that Japanese immigrants brought here.

- [Rev.

Thompson] Some of the basic tenants of Buddhism would focus mainly on trying to understand the idea of impermanence.

That all things are changing at every moment and that, you know, nothing will stay the same.

And to understand the idea of interconnectedness.

So within this impermanent life that we live, everything we do and everything outside of us, we're all kind of connected to one another.

- [Wei] The reasons for establishing a Buddhist temple, it's the same reasons that other people have for establishing religious institutions.

Because these religious institutions meet their spiritual and social needs.

- It was important to the Japanese community to have that spiritual tie to Japan.

- [Rev.

Thompson] I think the temples, as far as community goes, they're important because they're community centers.

It's a place to come back together with their community.

- [Shibao] The Brighton Japanese American farming community was pretty big and they didn't have a church and they wanted to build a church.

The Radtke family owned the land where the temple sits now.

I believe they dated it for $600.

That was back in 1938.

And there was a few families involved in building that church.

And our Shibao family was one of those.

- I'm Fujio "Fudge" Tashiro.

- How old are you going to be tomorrow?

- Oh, 102.

- [Sakaguchi] She's one of the only members of this community that is still living from that era.

She's our only relic.

So we have to.

She's precious to us.

(chuckles) - [Tashiro] I was raised in born here in Brighton.

Our parents, they were Buddhist from Japan.

You know, instead of taking us all the way to Denver, they decided, well, they'll, there's a land that was empty.

That's where they decided to buy that place and build our own church.

You know, a lot of us that was in the Brighton community, we're the ones that built it.

And I think it was my dad.

He's the one that kind of designed that place.

And that's where he wanted to build.

So there wouldn't be a lot of building around there.

- The church was built by a few families, Japanese American farmers.

- [Tashiro] You know, they didn't hire anybody.

They themselves, you know, decided to build the church.

- They determined it was by the community, yeah.

- For our temples the outside architecture itself is not super important.

As long as it's a space where we share the Dharma.

That's what's important to us.

We take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma which are the teachings, and the Sangha which is the community.

And you can't have one without the other two.

- [Narrator] The temple was completed in 1940, just one year before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

The United States entered World War II amidst tremendous racism against the Japanese.

(tense music) - [Asakawa] A lot of Americans hated the Japanese, the idea of the Japanese.

So they faced a lot of racism and difficulties and they had to fight stereotypes.

- [Dible] I think there was prejudice going on during that time.

I mean, as a community, we always try not to stir the pot, so to say.

- [Narrator] Several community groups in Brighton even wrote letters opposing the sale and renting of land, homes, and businesses to the Japanese community.

- The Yellow Peril panic was kind of this innate hatred and mistrust of Asians.

So the media of the day promoted this idea that Asians were evil and they didn't belong here.

Unfortunately, when COVID started, the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a lot of that still kind of just underneath the surface of the skin.

- [Trump] COVID-19 as opposed to calling it, the Chinese virus.

Kung-flu.

- When people felt threatened or frightened, their most basic fear and hatred come out.

And that's why there was a wave of anti-Asian hate crimes.

But Yellow Peril was a real problem.

- [Roosevelt] United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan.

- [Wei] The Japanese had attacked at Pearl Harbor.

And people were afraid that the Japanese were going to invade the United States.

- Executive Order 9066 was signed on February 19th, 1942, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

- [Narrator] Executive Order 9066 authorized the removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans living, working and raising families on America's West Coast.

The entire West Coast of the United States was declared a military zone where anyone of Japanese ancestry was to be removed.

The government questioned their loyalty to the US and forcibly moved 110,000 Japanese Americans into inland internment camps.

- [Wei] Executive Order fed into if you will, this general anxiety.

The Japanese from the West Coast were forced to leave and would be subsequently placed in 10 major concentration camps in the United States.

- [Narrator] Since the Executive Order only applied to the West Coast and some parts of Arizona, Japanese Coloradoans were not interned.

Colorado's governor, Ralph Carr, was the only Western governor who stood up to Order 9066 and even welcomed Japanese evacuees who managed to avoid internment.

- [Dible] I know my mom and her family, they were in California at the time, but governor Carr was instrumental in bringing people to Colorado.

And he said, you know, if you have family here, you're welcome here.

- To be honest, I never knew about the camps until I was an adult.

You know, they just never talked about those things.

- [Fudge] When the war broke out, then we decided to have church in our own homes, you know, 'cause a lot of the Buddhist people, they had an altar anyway, you know, and they're all in our own homes.

So that's what we did.

- [Shibao] We have incense, we have candle, and then we have the shrine or the Hokutsama.

(speaking in foreign language) - I remember that we took in families from California.

They belong to the same, like a County in Japan.

And they stayed with us.

I remember that very, very vivid memories.

And I don't remember going to church during all that period.

- As far as reaction from the community about how the Japanese Americans in Brighton were treated, I do know there was some segregation and some racism.

- [Carolyn Corogin] The research that we were doing, we uncovered that there was a march against the temple by the Ku Klux Klan.

And the understanding was that they were objecting to the temple having Sunday school.

- [Nathaniel Miller] And it's a little, it goes a little bit deeper with the books that we've read on this building and the community segregation and things like that.

- [Andrea Miller] The fight that they had to do in order to be here to be a part of the community and that people are still struggling with things like that in this day and age, and look at what they overcame.

- [Narrator] To affirm their patriotism, many Japanese Americans felt compelled to memorize the Japanese American creed.

Written in 1941, it was meant to demonstrate loyalty to the United States.

Some people grew up reciting the controversial oath hoping to quell anti-Asian racism.

After the war, Japanese Americans returned to the Brighton Buddhist temple where they centered their community.

- [Shibao] My earliest memories of going to the temple besides Sunday services was definitely what we referred to as Hanamatsuri.

It would be a big potluck at the church and everybody would have a big festival eat.

- [Sakaguchi] We'd have to report real early in our minister, slapped this white paint on us all over our face and on our neck.

- [Dible] And it would be an all day event and we would all get dressed up and everybody would participate in at least one dance and sometimes two dances.

There wasn't an empty seat in the house.

- [Sakaguchi] I don't know what they call these things, but we had to march around the temple, I remember that, with these things on our head making sure they didn't fall off.

Well, actually, all the community events that I remember took place in the church, funerals, weddings, any kind of celebration.

It was always based in the church.

And that was, I think, how we formed a community because of that church.

- And we called everybody aunt and uncle.

Later in school, they're like, man you have a big family!

It's like, well, they're not really my aunt but we're just so close.

And the community was so close that everybody just called each other aunt and uncle.

- [Narrator] The temple thrived through the end of the 20th century.

But as younger generations began to move away from the area, there were fewer families to support funding the building.

- [Wei] It's the fate of a lot of religious institutions, especially those in the rural areas.

The temple closed because of the lack of congregants.

- Well probably 2004, 2005, my mother said that she was having a hard time paying for the utilities of that church.

2005 is when the church closed and it got sold.

- [Dible] It was bittersweet, I guess.

It was sad because you play hide and seek there, you'd run around, and yeah, well, there was a lot of fun that we had there.

- After our church was sold, I was actually there personally to help carefully took down the altar and transferred it to the tri-state Denver Buddhist temple.

That's when the Brighton Buddhist Sangha was created.

And now we have monthly church services at all of our homes, and our home is one of them.

- [Narrator] The building was sold to a local developer, Carlson, in 2005.

And then for 10 years it sat vacant.

- Carlson.

They had plans to demolish the building and redefine this part of Brighton.

And I think it just didn't fit with their development plans.

- [Dible] It was kind of sad to see it empty and not being used because it really was well-built.

- [Narrator] Carolyn Corogin, an architect, bought the temple building in 2015 with the intention of converting it into a restaurant or brewery.

- The first time that we came to view the building, I saw it from the outside and I loved the architecture.

It was very clean and simple but it had this unusual feature on the front of the church, like a tower, like a medieval tower.

So that really piqued my interest.

There were bats and there were mice and there was asbestos floors and a bit of mold.

You could still see through and understand that the building had good bones and that it could have another life.

- [Shibao] When she bought that, she knew that it was Brighton Buddhist temple for years, many years.

She had a meeting with our congregation and we talked about, you know, the transition.

- When I first start to do the renovation, I wanted to meet as many of the Japanese Americans that were in the community that had firsthand knowledge or used to come to the temple.

And I wanted to propose the idea.

I was a little worried that they were not going to be happy that it was going to be turned into a brewery, but they were delighted that it was not going to be torn down.

And they were supportive from the very beginning.

- [Dible] When I heard that it was going to be a brewery, I was kind of excited because at least the building was going to be used and the structure was going to be stayed the same.

- [Rev.

Thompson] Nobody really seems to have had a problem with it.

There are a lot of misconceptions about things like we don't drink and we don't eat meat.

A lot of those taboos have to do with monastic communities.

Overall, I think the reception was really good and nobody really minded it.

- [Narrator] With approval from Brighton's Buddhist community, Carolyn forged ahead, repurposing the house of worship into a different sort of gathering place.

(bright music) - We shut our center valve.

We pull this coupler up, right?

And this keg is clean.

Okay.

- [Nathaniel Miller] Big Choice Brewing kind of came to fruition around 2010.

Tyler Rousse, who was a childhood friend of mine, we decided that we wanted to pair up and make ourselves a craft brewery.

- [Andrea Miller] So about five and a half years ago, we came across a realtor that showed us this building.

It just, it kind of fell on our lap at the right place, right time.

- [Carolyn] When I first met Andrea and Nathaniel, I had that sense that they had a sense of design and a care.

It wasn't just a fad to them.

That was their livelihood.

And they wanted to do the best they could.

- [Nathaniel] No, I think our personal perception on Carolyn is that she's a project fanatic.

She has a great sense of view in when it looks at buildings and she likes to take their inner most soul and bring it back out again.

- [Shibao] And before they opened up the Big Choice Brewing company, they decided to have a private service with the Brighton Buddhist temple members and the Reverend of the Denver Buddhist temple.

- [Rev.

Thompson] I was there for the opening ceremony when they were about to convert it into the brew pub that it is now.

That was greatly appreciated.

I know by the community that you know, they were able to sort of honor that space.

- [Sakaguchi] That was so nice of them.

We did a blessing for the brew pub and it meant a lot to me, I guess.

It was closure.

I can't talk right now.

(chuckles) It was like closing a book on a chapter and that's over now.

- [Shibao] You climb the stairs, a big charge.

You enter the front door and right before you get into their big brewery room, there's pictures of our Brighton Buddhist temple members and church.

And it just honors us that way.

- And that's been resounded across, all the time we've been here so far, that the community has been very thankful and welcoming to us to be part of this.

We've had a few people come in that we knew had been part of this community.

One in particular where her name was Joyce Sakaguchi, I kind of felt like I was a kid at a rock show to have somebody that was on a picture from, you know, the '50s back then showing her kimono and her parasol when she was a young girl.

Just the smile that she had when she came in here, it really just warms your heart.

- [Sakaguchi] Well, that picture was taken during one of our festivals.

And I went through this period where I had this horrible hairdo.

When they first opened, they allowed the church members to go on a tour and I chose to go on the tour and he's talking about this picture and I said, "Oh my God, there I am right there."

You know, ugliest picture of the year.

And he says, "I want you to autograph it."

So I autographed it for him.

- [Nathaniel] We get to touch history right here and she can tell me all of the little nuances and the things that they did and how safe they felt in this building.

- [Sakaguchi] I love the Millers.

I don't think the church could have asked for any better renters.

They've kept things intact.

I'm just so proud of them.

- [Narrator] Though Carolyn breathed new life into the building, she wanted to ensure the temple's history would be preserved into the future.

After many hours of research and a proposal to Brighton City Council, the building was designated as a local historic landmark.

- [Carolyn] I felt like the building should be designated historically so that it would be protected.

If a developer came in or somebody else bought the property, they would not be able to tear it down.

I believe in old buildings.

Instead of tearing something out and starting from fresh and new, I think the history adds a nice layer.

- [Narrator] In order to achieve historical designation, a building has to be over 50 years old and have social, cultural, or historic significance.

The Brighton Buddhist temple was deemed worthy on all counts.

- [Carolyn] The day that the building was designated historically, it was very proud moment for me because it was a little bit to work through that process.

And to know that the building was going to be a place in history and is protected.

- [Narrator] The designation also comes with helpful tax credits to fund some expensive renovations.

- [Carolyn] Which was important in my case because the building was more of a project than I originally thought.

Certain things, you know, building, like renovating the exterior, the roof, the insulation, those are appropriate to be able to claim for tax credits.

The building is a masonry building.

A concrete block with stucco on top of it.

A little bit different type of concrete block that was unique to this area.

And the windows are wood and single pane glass.

The absolute favorite part is that weird piece on the front of the building, the crenelated top, the tower.

I did a bit of research and tried to figure out why that piece was added.

I don't have an explanation.

It's not in Buddhist architecture.

- Carolyn did a great job in transforming the outside of the building to make it exciting and new and yet still maintain the look of the building to not lose what it originally was.

- I added the big garage doors and the decks and downstairs used to have a wood floor with, you know, sitting on dirt.

And so that was removed because they needed to be able to have drains for their brewing.

Sometimes these old buildings have a life that's appropriate for that time, but when you translate to today it doesn't always work unless you do some modifications.

- [Nathaniel] So some of the original aspects of the building are the original hardwood floors.

They were original from 1940.

The walls, the ceilings, all the exposed wood.

A lot of it just gives a real nice feeling of warmth.

We've had comments from different contractors.

They don't make it like this anymore.

You know, the hand work that has been done here was really designed for this place to have longevity.

- [Sakaguchi] I really am grateful for what these little farmers who had very little training could do to have a building that lasted this long.

- [Narrator] The building's legacy is in its transformation.

It's reincarnation from Buddhist temple to brewery.

It still stands as does the Brighton Japanese American community, despite the worst rise in anti-Asian sentiment since World War II.

- I think the lasting impact and legacy of Japanese in Colorado is the community's resilience.

The fact that we came looking for a better life and that we faced a lot of adversity.

- [Nathaniel] Knowing what it took to get this building where it is now from start to finish, all the people who toiled on it, including us, all of those aspects are very important to me in the sense that this building kind of is living and breathing history.

- [Shibao] And also I think Buddhists understand, kind of, the temporal nature of things, things evolve, things change, and I think in a way, that might make sense in a Buddhist philosophy.

- [Sakaguchi] I'm so happy that it is still there.

And I'm glad that it is a brew pub because I remember we had a lot of good drinking going on there (laughing) and good memories.

- I think the legacy of this building is going to be the ability to bring people together.

I think that's what it was created for in the first place.

We are carrying that torch on now from the previous folks.

- [Dible] I think it's important to preserve the building just because of the history there.

We know that it was our great grandparents and grandparents that help build that building.

And so it's kind of nice to know that future generations can see that building still standing, even after all these years.

- [Sakaguchi] It's part of the Japanese community.

It means a lot to us really.

I mean, for me, it's a statement that we were here and we survived and we're stronger for it.

I'm very proud of that building.

Aren't you, auntie?

You're proud of that.

Aren't you?

I am.

- Oh yeah.

- Yeah.

(calm music)