Ed Shimamoto was born behind barbed wire in 1944.

He was 1 year old when the U.S. government finally let his family leave that Japanese-American internment camp in Rohwer, Ark. But they had nothing to go back to; the strawberry and grape farm in California that was their livelihood before World War II was as good as gone.

So they headed north to St. Louis, because they heard it was a friendly place to live, meaning not as prejudiced as other cities.

As their way of showing gratitude to St. Louis, Shimamoto’s family and 23 others started the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Japanese festival 40 years ago. This was his parents’ gift, or “omiyage,” to St. Louis.

“It’s a matter of fulfilling my parents’ dream,” Shimamoto said Wednesday while propping up 20-foot-long bamboo poles with flying carp by the Japanese garden’s pond for this weekend’s festival. “I work to preserve that dream.”

For this 40th anniversary of the long-popular festival, those 24 families are being honored with their family crests printed on the back of this year’s festival T-shirts.

The festival draws more than 40,000 people each Labor Day weekend and is indicative of how St. Louis has become an understated U.S. hub of Japanese culture.