Portland’s cherry Blossoms and Japanese History

Since I had recently been in the wintery, stick-like cherry trees at the Portland waterfront, I was keeping my ears tuned to word that the trees were in bloom. All of a sudden, posts from friends on Facebook and Instagram were popping up with cherry blossoms. It is a late spring here in Portland. Sometimes, we can be awash in blossoms and warmth in February. This year, not so much. Though the average temperature is slowly eeking into the 40s, and even 50 degrees (10 C) now and then, I saw snow at my house over the weekend, and Pedro and I were out in Troutdale, Oregon on Sunday where there were several inches of snow. Spring is determined to take her sweet time this year.

It all means that THIS year, in Portland, it is April before the blossoms are really going. With more snow and sleet and hail forecast, as well as a Winter Weather warning, Pedro and I thought we should try to see the blossoms sooner rather than later, because all that nasty weather could easily knock the pretty pink to the ground. He was trapped at the conference in Troutdale, so I went to the cherry blossoms alone.

Cherry blossoms are linked to Japanese culture, as they are the most important flower and the act of cherry blossom viewing has been a thing to do in Japan about as far back as records go. It is apt, then, that Portland’s cherry trees are co-located with the Japanese American Historical Plaza. The West, and Oregon in particular, has a painful history to face with regard to Japanese Americans. This plaza, dedicated in 1990, with its cherry trees are a way to make sure the conversation continues.

The shape of the plaza incorporates landscape elements reminiscent of the Japanese use of landscape. There are sculptures, poetry, and a Bill of Rights memorial that follow curves and hills beside the river, and invite visitors to engage with the landscape. Sculptures by Jim Gion mark the Western gateway to the Plaza, and twelve granite stones featuring poetry by Hisako Saito, Lawson Inada, Masaki Kinoshita, and Shizue Iwatsuki can be seen beneath the trees.

The plaza honors Japanese immigrants who began coming to the Western shores at the end of the 19th century. Paths of immigration changed and were blocked, so the movement of Japanese to the U.S. nearly stopped and by 1942 the people who lived here included the children and grandchildren of the first wave. It then honors the Japanese Americans who were imprisoned during WWII.

I had heard brief references to Japanese internment, but didn’t know much about it, nor did I take the time to look it up, until 2009 when our offices at Department of Veterans Affairs in Portland invited a couple of speakers to come and talk to us. We met Kennie and Ruth Namba, who were survivors of these internment camps and residents of Oregon. Mr. Namba was the one who explained to me why Portland should care so much. It’s because many families imprisoned came from our area, especially from the fruit orchards out in the Columbia River Gorge, like Namba’s family.

Kennie Namba, who died in 2012, was born near Troutdale, Oregon and his family farmed some property. His father had to lease the land because first generation Japanese were prohibited from owning land. As soon as Kennie’s oldest sibling, his sister, turned 18, she purchased ten acres and their parents managed those acres in addition to the larger portion of land that they leased. In 1942, the US government began posting notices on homes and businesses belonging to people of Japanese descent, and mailing letters, instructing them that in a couple of days they would be forcibly removed. Most of those people dutifully packed, and dressed in traveling clothes, and on the date named, they stood waiting for vehicles to pick them up and take them away. That part is incomprehensible to me; that they were compliant. Under what circumstances were they living, that peaceful compliance was the best choice?

Kennie Namba said, “Why didn’t we challenge the United States court, relative to relocation? I like to relate it to Japanese history. I was taught while growing up that our society is made up of people. And within a society there are governing rules. You have to obey every rule. So when this edict came out and said that Japanese Americans and their native moms and dads will be relocated, who was to say that they didn’t have the right? But sometime afterward, we studied the law, and realized they didn’t have a right to do that.”

In an amazing interview for the Library of Congress, Namba brings up another important point. “Even though we were also at war with Germany and Italy, and there were certainly many people of German and Italian descent living on the West Coast, why were the Japanese people the ones affected?”

Even though it was unconstitutional to imprison American citizens because of their ethnic background, the Executive Order was put into place under the premise that it was an emergency, because of the war. In total, 125,284 people of Japanese descent were forcibly interned and imprisoned. Never before had a people ethnically related to a military opponent of the United States been singled out from all other people in the nation and deprived of their rightful protections under the Constitution. The people were imprisoned for 3 to 4 years, till the end of the war. While they were gone, opportunists stole their land, their businesses, their cars, their homes, their possessions. Some families were able to hang on to their things when Caucasian friends and neighbors stepped up and protected their property for them in their absence.

Kennie Namba explained how difficult it was for everyone, and especially the young men trapped in this cage. He was 17 when he was sent to the Minidoka camp in Idaho. His wife Ruth spent time at the Tule Lake camp. At some camps, the interned could look through the fence to see other Americans going about their daily life with no restrictions. It was maddening. The boredom, he told us, was the worst of all. People in the camps had to create new infrastructure. They pooled resources and formed mini-schools and sewing groups to repair clothing. They had to gather in the tiny makeshift sleeping rooms, because the government did not provide schools or community buildings, only community showers and toilets, where you did your personal business in full view of everyone else. For years, people just existed in flimsy temporary shelters, waiting to see what their government would do to them. There were no jobs for them to stay busy at, and no one was ever allowed out. When the young men realized they could join the military, they jumped at the chance to escape.

We asked Namba how he could have joined the Army and served the very government that was oppressing him, but he said they were desperate, simply desperate to get out. The men learned that if they volunteered for the Army, they could not be prevented from leaving the camp, so they volunteered. Further, Namba reminded us that he was an American, and he loved his country as much as any American.

In a segregated regiment of only Japanese Americans, dealing with the world war on the international horizon, and searing racism on the domestic horizon, the 442 Regimental Combat Team adopted the motto of “Go For Broke.” Namba told us an insane story from 1945 when the 442nd was assigned to make the final push into the Po Valley. They came to a knoll that equipment couldn’t climb, only people, and at the top of this hill were snipers with high powered guns that were keeping the entire unit pinned down. His sergeant asked if the men would be willing to try and sneak up the hill by a back way and take out the machine gun nest. Some men remained at the bottom and created a distraction by attacking from a different side, while Kennie and about six others crawled up the hill under constant barrage of hand grenades. One landed close to him and sent 16 pieces of shrapnel into Mr. Namba. He received both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for that particular battle. The 442nd eventually captured the knoll. Today they are remembered as the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in the history of the US military.

Because all of us employees worked to give veterans disability benefits, we asked of Mr. Namba to make sure that he was receiving some. “Oh yes!” he replied. “I asked one day if there might be a little help that I qualified for, and VA sent me to some doctors and right away they said, ‘Well we are going to give you 50% disability.’ I was so happy and grateful. Then one day they sent me a letter and said, ‘Mr. Namba, we are going to increase your disability payment to 70%.’ I don’t know how sick they thought I was, but it would help and I was pleased and told them thank you! And wouldn’t you know it, a few years later they sent me another letter and said, ‘Mr. Namba, we are going to increase your disability payments to 100%.’ I said, ‘Why, thank you!’ I am very grateful to the VA,” he said. “They have always taken good care of me.” Just so you know, that is not how VA works. They don’t just randomly increase benefits without the veterans having any knowledge of it. But I do love the way he remembers events, humbling himself and praising the VA.

He spent 60 days in a hospital and was then asked to remain in the military, but he wanted to go home and had earned the right to do so. He found Ruth again, a woman he had met when she came to the Minidoka camp, and they got reacquainted. He soon asked her to marry him. After a long life with children and grandchildren, and the loss of her husband, Ruth died in 2016.

Though their lease was good for seven years, after the Namba family returned to their home, they were prevented from going back to the farm that they had worked for years and still had a valid lease on. Even more, all their farm equipment that they had put into storage before they left, had been stolen, as well as all their personal items, like Namba’s medals that he had earned in high school Judo and Track & Field competitions. His mother had brought items from Japan when she immigrated, that were dear to her. Those things were stolen as well. They blessed their fortune that the eldest daughter had purchased 10 acres, and with that tiny piece of land, the family of seven somehow survived as farmers, but it was tough.

There is a searchable list at the Ireizo website, in case you want to look up the name of someone you know who was imprisoned in one of the camps.