The group was made up of 22 people from samurai families during the Boshin Civil War (1868–69) in Japan preceding the Meiji Restoration.

The group purchased land from Charles Graner family in the Gold Hill region after coming to San Francisco in 1869.

American River Conservancy offers private and public tours of the property, including Okei Ito's gravesite.

[3] After coming to Japan, he was employed by Lord Matsudaira as an arms dealer for cannons and Gatling guns.

They took with them 50,000 three-year-old kuwa (mulberry trees) used for the cultivation of silk worms and six million tea seeds.

They brought with them mulberry trees, silkworm cocoons, tea plant and bamboo shoots, cooking utensils, and swords.

[5] They caught the attention of the press, including the San Francisco Alta Daily News, who praised the Japanese work ethic.

[3] The colony hoped to establish an agricultural settlement and purchased approximately 200 acres of land, a farmhouse, and farm outbuildings from Charles Graner, the settler for the Gold Hill Ranch (1856) in June 1869.

Many of the colonists dispersed following the perceived abandonment of John Henry Schnell and the purchase of the land by the Francis Veerkamp family in 1873.

[3] Masumizu Kuninosuke married an African/American Indian woman named Carrie Wilson in Coloma in 1877 and eventually moved to Sacramento where he lived until his death in 1915.

Her grave can be found on a hill overlooking the Gold Trail School with a tombstone stating "In Memory of Okei, Died 1871.

[3][4] A plaque was placed at the site then by the Parks and Recreation State Department in cooperation with JACL, El Dorado Historical Society and Friends of the Centennial Observance.

[10] The Veerkamp family donated the original silk and gold-thread banner with the Tokugawa/Matsudaira lotus blossom crest along with a ceremonial dagger believed to have belonged to Jou Schnell (John Henry Schnell's wife) to the Marshall Gold State Historic Park in 2001.

Later that year, the family appealed to the American River Conservancy (ARC) to ask for help in restoration of the Graner-Wakamatsu-Veerkamp farmhouse, providing public access and interpretation of the cultural history of the farm.