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As part of Oregon's 150th anniversary commemoration, the Oregon Library Association chose to spotlight an Oregon pioneer story, albeit one without the familiar Oregon Trail pedigree. They selected Stubborn Twig, by Eugene author Lauren Kessler.
This is Oregon's first statewide exercise to get people around the entire state to read and talk about one book at more or less the same time. The book traces the true story of three generations of a Japanese-American family in the Pacific Northwest, beginning in 1903 when Masuo Yasui arrived in Hood River. He quickly became a prominent member of the Japanese community and a successful businessman, running a general store and several orchards, brokering land deals and labor contracts, selling life insurance and travel services — "a veritable cottage industry unto himself."
But he faced great discrimination as anti-Japanese sentiment grew. In 1941 he was arrested as a spy and imprisoned. Many of his family members were put in internment camps. Kessler chronicles the impact on the people who lived through that time — and on the generations that followed.
Have you read Stubborn Twig? What do you think of its message about Oregon's history? What resonates today?
Do you remember World War Two on the West Coast? Do you remember when did you first learned of the Japanese internment camps? What is it like to talk about this time now?
Guests:
- Lauren Kessler: Author of Stubborn Twig and numerous other non-fiction books and director of the graduate program in literary non-fiction at the University of Oregon
- Yuka Fujikura: Youngest child of Masuo Yasui
- Bill Pattison: Fourth-generation Hood River resident and former mayor of Hood River
Tagged as: history · hood river · literature · oregon at 150
Photo credit: Oregon State University Press
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I am currently a student at PSU. I did not learn about the Japanese internment camps until just a few years ago in high school. I couldn't believe that every history lesson I had prior to that had skipped over this important point in northwest history.
A great book for young readers is Weedflower which tells the story of a Japanese family being taken to an internment camp froom the point of view of a 10-year-old girl.
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If you're interested in the parts of US history that were skipped over and left out of mainstream books, I highly recommend Howard Zinn and Thom Hartman.
And Marine Major General Smedly Butler wrote an essay on war "War is a Racket", if you're interested in the change in views of a US warrior who reached the highest levels of the US military and had an epiphany about the businesses who demand and benefit from wars and who actually paid the price. It is on the web.
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For a different perspective on the Japanese American experience I highly recommend Carl Nomura's Autobiography "Sleeping On Potatoes."
His incredible story goes from the Japanese internment camps in Manzanar all the way up to being a corporate executive at Honeywell.
He currently is retired in Washington.
Here is a bit about him from his website:
Carl Nomura was born in a boxcar somewhere between Deer Lodge, Mont. and Three Forks, Mont. He was the third son of immigrant Japanese American parents and the family struggled to survive. Moving constantly around the West Coast, the family spent time farming, working on the railroad and running a small general store. When World War II started, the Nomura family was relocated to Manzanar, an internment camp in California. Carl decided to become a migratory farm laborer to escape the drudgery and humiliation of the internment camp, and was later drafted into the Army. When the war ended, he made another decision—to get his education so no one could ever take that away from him. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1948, a master’s of science degree in 1949 and a doctorate degree in physics in 1953.
http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Potatoes-Carl-Nomura/dp/0970194730/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239293942&sr=8-1
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Interesting coincidence, I was thinking about this very thing last night after watching a WW2 propaganda movie where Marines were being vetted to a raider battalion, and an apparently unquestionable motive for joining was, "I hate Japs."
In the movie, the Japanese soldiers were depicted as sneaky, inept and total losers, which is instructive when I think of the deep paradox between the way the US population was led to perceive the Japanese, and the extreme difficulties our soldiers, sailors and Marines had with them in the Pacific war.
I don't recall seeing anything like that about Germans in the movies of my youth; it is instructive regarding the deeply ingrained racist nature of our culture.
But as an American Indian, I sorta knew that.
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Another thing came to mind; the first professed communists I ever met were Chinese, living in Queretaro, Mexico in 1966. Their families had moved from California during World War II, because although they were not Japanese, and in fact their native country was suffering terribly from the Japanese invaders, the fact that they looked Asian was enough for many Americans to treat them very badly. As we have done so many times in so many ways, we created a whole new class of enemies for ourselves.
The USA is a wonderful country, but how much better we might be were we not afflicted by our debilitating bigotry! And when will people realize that bigotry in all its guises, not just the enemies of particular groups, is the real enemy of all of us?
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As the son of a Niesei married to a Caucasian, I would hear jokes and comments about "Japs". I'd protest saying, "hey, I am half-Japanese!" They'd answer, "yeah, but you're *different*". I didn't look Asian. Another half-Japanese boy who looked very Asian got lots of jokes and harrassment. This was in the 80s.
Meanwhile, in Texas a State Rep *this week* suggested Asian-Americans should change their names because they’re too hard to pronounce:
“Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”
- State Rep. Betty Brown (R)http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/09/brown-asian-names/
-T.L.
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I live in southern Oregon, very near the camp in which Ms. Fujikura was imprisoned during the war. I can still see these structures, they are still standing in Tulelake, California. Strangley enough, one structure was converted to apartments where people still live. They are sad reminders of so many people's stories.
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When I was a grade-schooler in Twin Falls, Idaho, I walked home for lunch one day and found a Japanese-American couple there with my parents. The man was in an army uniform and was about to ship out to fight in WWII. This was a surprise for me. Our town knew of the internment camp in nearby Minidoka, but those interred were generally viewed as aliens--possibly spies or saboteurs when they came to town to shop on Saturdays. But my parents had been going to the camp once a month with a group from their church and had made many friends, including this couple. It was quite a lesson for me about my parents, their church, and the humanity of the people in Minidoka.
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Just want to add that if people are interested in learning more about the internment, they can visit the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center in Old Town/Chinatown in Portland. It's at 121 NW 2nd Ave
Portland, OR 97209 - (503) 224-1458. The center is the only museum dedicated to telling the story of Japanese Americans during WWII in the northwest and does an excellent job.At the museum, visitors will see photos of the internment, watch a video of interviews with internees, and see a recreation of a typical camp barracks room. It's truly a moving and enlightening place and I encourage any listener who would like to learn more about it to visit the museum.
Also, the Japanese American Historical Plaza in Waterfront Park (north of the Burnside Bridge) commemorates the event but points out that the story is about civil rights for all Americans. Visiting both the historical plaza and the museum is a wonderful way to learn more about this regrettable even tin U.S. history.
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I read STUBBORN TWIG when I first started thinking about coming to the UO for Lauren Kessler's Literary Nonfiction program (which I did, graduated from it in 2004). At the time, I was teaching freshman rhetoric and research at the University of Iowa, and I used STUBBORN TWIG with several classes over the course of two or three years to talk about historical research and constructing compelling narratives.
My students, most of them from Iowa and Illinois, wrote reading journals each week, and they often mentioned reading FAREWELL TO MANZANAR in junior high. Some of them resisted the idea of reading STUBBORN TWIG -- oh, we already KNOW about internment camps, they would say -- but they all got drawn into the narrative quickly, and it was amazing to watch them get emotionally involved in the story of the Yasuis. By the end of the book, many of them would tell me, they were in tears.
A couple of the things that struck me as I read STUBBORN TWIG for the first time: the Yasuis, like so many others immigrants, worked hard to establish themselves as Americans and participated in civic life to a degree that would almost never be required of white residents of the town; and when internment came, the property of the Yasuis and so many other Japanese Americans was, for the most part, stolen from them. Just ... taken. That still seems quite, quite shocking.
I appreciate the huge amount of research that went into this book, and I'm so glad that Lauren was also able to create a compelling narrative from the very beginning of STUBBORN TWIG. I was glad to hear that the librarians chose it, along with Virginia Euwer Wolff's superb BAT 6, for the entire state to read. I hope everyone's reading them!
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We are, as newcomer Portlanders, all deeply indebted to Oregon's Yasui family for their loyal and stubborn resistence to an anxious America, setting aside the United States Constitution.
We so respect Japanese America's long silent suffering for their families' shame, indeed for everyone's humiliation for this fundemental human wrong.
Terima kasih (we offer our love) Professor Kessler, for giving this community voice, for restoring everyone's dignity, for setting this record of recklessness straight.
Ronault LS Catalani, City of Portland, Immigrant & Refugee Affairs
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My family and I immigrated to the U.S. from Japan in 1971. I'm half Japanese, my mom was Japanese and my dad was white from Minnisota. We settled in Klamath Falls. In the 70's, a TV movie about a young Japanese American girl interned in Tule Lake was filmed on location and word got out that the studio was looking for Oriental looking people for extras. All the Japanese wives in Klamath Falls went to audition along with all the half Japanese kids. My brother and I didn't get parts because we looked too white (that always seemd to the issue with us, too white or not white enough). Watching the scenes and later the movie on TV was an awakening experience for me. This was the first time I realized that discrimination can happen against 'pure' non-mixed people too. And to see this happen against a race that was so bigotted against my brother and me was very strange. Ever since then, I've become extremely sensitive to racial issues and use my white privilege to advocate as effectively as I can toward minimizing racial and cultural bigotry.
By the way, my Japanese family, Otani, are from Hiroshima and are either survivors or witnesses to the atomic bomb explosion.
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A child of first generation Germans, (my grandparents had immigrated 30 years earlier) I was 5 years old when the war ended. We had lived for 3 years on a farm of rented land near a very small town in central Washington and my father had a draft exemption as a farmer. His younger brother was serving in the Army Air Corps in the Pacific.
Soon after hostilities ceased, there was a knock at the door and my father came into the kitchen and told my mother that there were 2 Japs at the door and they wanted to borrow a shovel, which he loaned to them. At the word "Japs", I ran, crying, into my bedroom and hid under my bed and stayed there quite some time until coaxed out by my mother.
The two men, accompanied by my father, had gone out behind the barn and dug up two stoneware crocks that contained valuables they had buried when their family was interned.
When I think back on this incident, I am struck by how a small child can be so frightened by loaded words and the fear that had been internalized from conversations that had been overheard and the evening radio broadcasts that were listened to religiously, the only real source of news at that time.
A few years later when attending grade school, one of my sister's friends was a Japanese-Filipino girl. Our mother explained that her mother had been pregnant when the internment took place, had been hidden by neighbors to prevent her removal from the area and had remained in hiding until the war was over.
Many Japanese farmers returned to our area after the war and resumed farming.
Books such as the Stubborn Twig are important as we need repeated reminders of the injustices committed in the name of patriotism and national safety.
As a community and a nation we need to heed history and actively resist the promotion of fear and demonization of "the other". Yesterday it was the Japanese, today it is Muslims, Middle Easterners and even the French and "socialists".
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I have visited Hood River many times (live in Portland) done the Fruit Loop etc., and am not aware of any visible sign or evidence of the Issei and Nisei's contributions to Hood River. Is there a Yasui Avenue? Would a visitor to Hood River have any way to learn about the great contributions that that immigrant community made to get the orchard and fruit industry up and running to be world renowned as it is today? It is very sad to me if their whole presence has been erased.
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The strongest message from Stubborn TWIG is a deeply American one -- that we are all immigrants. Few people, myself included, are native Oregonians.
I came to this book wanting an education about Japanese internment. That is part of the book, but not the most important, though in that respect it has satisfied my need to know about that part of our history.
But the book is really a deep character study written in narrative form. It tells a seldom told side of Oregon that really wasn't that uncommon. It is about a couragous man -- not always a good man -- who raises his family on American values and with the American promise in mind.
It broke my heart -- more than once.
www.desperatelyseekingsalem.com