The Willow Grove Cemetery, located on Morris Street in downtown New Brunswick, New Jersey, is the site of the graves of some of the first Japanese students who studied in the United States. Its Japanese Section was purchased in 1870 by the Japanese Consulate on behalf of the Imperial Government as a burial place for Kusakabe Taro (1845-1870), who died on April 13, 1870, of tuberculosis at age 26, two weeks before his graduation from Rutgers College. Kusakabe, a samurai from Fukui, Japan, was one of the first two Japanese students to graduate from an American college (his degree was awarded posthumously). Seven other Japanese citizens are buried here, most of them students in New York and its vicinity. The grave markers at Willow Grove were restored in 1977, when Mayor Otake Yukio of Fukui City donated two thousand dollars during his visit to New Brunswick. The “Service of Remembrance and Dedication,” led by Reverend Seki Hozen of the New York Buddhist Church, was held in remembrance of the Japanese students on October 18 of that year at Kirkpatrick Chapel, Rutgers University. New Brunswick, as part of its Sister Cities program, with the New York Buddhist Church, the Seabrook Buddhist Temple, and Ekoji Buddhist Temple in Virginia, hosts a Buddhist Bon service at this plot every summer in remembrance of the deceased students.  Click here for more.