Shinichi Seike immigrated from Ehime in 1919, ran an import-export business in Seattle, and in 1929 bought 13 acres near Des Moines Memorial Drive, where he moved with his wife Kameno and their children Ruth, Shizu, Ben, Toll, and Hal. During World War II, the family was forced into the Heart Mountain and Tule Lake internment camps under President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, signed in 1942 as part of the evacuation and incarceration of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast. All three sons served in the military, and Toll was killed in action in France while serving with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Unlike many Highline-area Japanese American families who lost their property during internment, the Seikes retained their Des Moines Way property because a German-American family managed it in their absence. After returning, Ben Seike started a nursery in 1948, and a nursery store opened in 1953 after Hal and Ben earned horticulture degrees from Washington State University. In 1961 the family began building a Japanese garden on the nursery property as a memorial to Toll, working with Hiroshima garden designer Shintaro Okada, who arrived in December 1960; construction started in January 1961, was completed by June, and a gala opening was held on June 28. Designed as a personal retreat and sanctuary in the traditional Tsukiyama style, the garden was built with more than 1,000 yards of dirt to form a mountain on the level site and about 350 tons of large rocks for a waterfall, stream, and ponds, with most of the labor done by hand. Its features included a turtle-shaped rock symbolizing long life, a concrete crane symbolizing good fortune, three styles of bridges, stone lanterns, carefully selected plantings including specimens from Shinichi Seike's collection, a 2,000-gallon artificial pond supplied by an artesian well, and symbolic stones such as Fudo Seki, the first stone placed and the male spirit around which the garden was designed. In 1996 plans to expand SeaTac Airport with a third runway placed the garden in the path of development, and in 2002 the Port of Seattle purchased the property. With help from local and state leaders, the City and the Highline Botanical Garden Foundation secured funding, including a $250,000 state grant, to relocate the garden to the Highline SeaTac Botanical Garden. The move, costing about $350,000, carefully documented and repositioned the major stones and recreated the stonework, pond, bridges, lanterns, and other built elements, producing a historically accurate reproduction that remained true to the spirit of the original garden.