Portland to March for Civil Rights Hero – Minoru Yasui

Minoru “Min” YasuiOn the evening of March 28, 1942, Minoru “Min” Yasui, deliberately violated the racially discriminatory curfew against Japanese Americans to test its constitutionality, walking on NW 3rd Avenue in downtown Portland. Min’s lifelong fight for justice and equality led to his recognition as the first Oregonian to be awarded (posthumously) the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

At the age of twenty-six, Yasui put his professional career and his personal liberty on the line for justice. He spent 9 months in solitary confinement at the Multnomah County Jail as he appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was released from jail in 1943, only to be sent to the Minidoka American concentration camp in Idaho. More 

Join us to retrace Min’s historic walk for social justice on March 28th 

Please join us on Monday, March 28, as we retrace Min’s historic walk from his law office in the Foster Hotel in Old Town, to the former site of Police Headquarters on SW 2nd Avenue and Oak Street. Gather at Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center (121 NW 2nd Avenue Portland Ore 97209 map) at 4:30 pm for the short 6 block walk followed by a program in the foyer and reception in the offices of Stoll Berne at SW Second Avenue and Oak Street. Download flyer 389KB pdf

Yasui was awarded the 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the country. The Oregon Senate and House unanimously recently passed a historic bill designating March 28 of each year as Minoru Yasui Day. More from the Min Yasui Tribute Project

Never Give Up! – Trailer from Minoru Yasui Film on Vimeo.

Minoru Yasui was born 100 years ago in 1916 in Hood River, Oregon, son of Japanese immigrant parents. He was the first Japanese American to graduate from the University of Oregon School of Law, and the first Japanese American member of the Oregon State Bar.

After the war, he moved to Denver, Colorado, where he continued to fight for human and civil rights of all people. In the 1970s-80s, he spearheaded the national movement for redress: an official apology and reparations for Japanese Americans imprisoned in the World War II camps.

In 1983, he returned to Portland to reopen his wartime case in the U.S. District Court of Oregon. While his conviction was vacated, the court denied his request for an evidentiary hearing, which he appealed. His case was pending in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals when he died in 1986. Minoru Yasui is buried in his beloved hometown of Hood River, Oregon.

Image credit: Holly Yasui / Oregon Encyclopedia link 

Uprooted: Russell Lee FSA Photo Exhibit

Uprooted from Uprooted Exhibit on Vimeo.

During the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans, some 33,000 Nikkei left concentration camps to work as seasonal farm laborers, often in the sugar beet industry. UPROOTED introduces their story. This traveling exhibit features a selection of images from federal photographer Russell Lee’s documentation of farm labor camps in Oregon and Idaho. Through Lee’s photographs, new research, and firsthand accounts from farm laborers themselves, the exhibit uncovers the rarely told story of life in the camps.

Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center
February 11th to June 19th. 
121 NW 2nd Ave. Portland, OR 97209

Uprooted Exhibit 07

The Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission is proud to present Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps During World War II. The exhibit features a selection of photographs from Russell Lee’s documentation of Japanese American farm labor camps near the towns of Nyssa, Oregon and Rupert, Shelley, and Twin Falls, Idaho. This is the first time many of these images have been exhibited. As a photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Lee captured nearly six hundred images of the Nikkei wartime experience. From 1935 to 1944, the FSA’s documentary photography program produced approximately 175,000 black-and-white film negatives and 1,600 color images.

Visitors will learn about Japanese American farm labor camps through Lee’s photographs, interpretative text panels, and a short documentary film featuring firsthand accounts about life in the camps. The exhibit’s website includes additional photographs, historic documents, video clips and transcripts from oral history interviews, and two lesson plans - How to Read Documentary Films and How to Read Documentary Photographs (Note: I developed both lessons).

Uprooted Exhibit 05

This exhibit was supported by grants from the National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites Preservation Program; the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based Program of the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Fred W. Fields Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation; the Malheur County Cultural Trust; and the Rose E. Tucker Charitable Trust.

Farm Labor ad from the Minidoka Irrigator (camp newspaper)For more information on this project please contact the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission. For questions regarding the JACS grant program, please contact Kara Miyagishima, Program Manager, Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program, NPS, at 303-969-2885.

Click ad on left to enlarge  For more photos see Uprooted Photo Gallery 

Men on truck: Many of the single men and families came to the Rupert, Idaho camp from Minidoka, Heart Mountain, Manzanar, and Poston. The seasonal leave program drew a mix of people, some with previous agricultural experience and others without. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USF34-073890-D.

The Ouchida family at the Nyssa, Oregon farm labor camp, pictured clockwise from the lower left: Jack, Shizuko, Henry, Thomas, Kiuda, Shizuyo, Mary, and Rosie. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USF34-073354-D.

Newspaper Ad “You don’t need to wait any longer to get out.” From the Minidoka Irrigator.
Sugar companies posted recruitment notices and advertisements in public spaces throughout the camps, as well as in camp newspapers. Such advertisements emphasized seasonal labor as an opportunity to leave confines of camp, but also marketed the work as the patriotic duty of Japanese Americans, ignoring that they had been incarcerated and denied their civil liberties.
National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C., Record Group 210, War Relocation Authority.
 

Photo Exhibit Locates Subjects of WWII Images

Pledge of Allegiance: Hideno Nakamoto and Yoko Itashiki at age 7 and at 72 Pledge of Allegiance: Hideno Nakamoto and Yoko Itashiki at age 7 and at 72

There is a powerful new exhibit at the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center Museum in Old Town Portland Ore. (121 NW 2nd Ave Portland, OR 97209)

“Gambatte! Legacy of an Enduring Spirit” Open through January 17, 2016.

In this all new traveling exhibit, historic images shot in 1942 by War Relocation Authority staff photographers Dorothea Lange, Tom Parker, and others are juxtaposed with contemporary images of the same individuals taken by Sacramento Bee photojournalist Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

The Story Behind the Exhibit by Paul Kitagaki Jr. on Vimeo.

Kitagaki writes:
In the late 1970s, as I started on my path as a photographer, my uncle, Nobuo Kitagaki, an artist in San Francisco, told me that Dorothea Lange had photographed my grandparents, father and aunt in 1942 as they awaited a bus in Oakland, Calif., to begin their journey into detention. Several years later, while looking through hundreds of Lange’s photographs at the National Archives in Washington D.C., I found her original images of my family.

As I examined Lange’s work I realized that every photograph represented an untold story that was quietly buried in the past. I had many questions and few answers. Most importantly, I wanted to know how Executive Order 9066 forever changed the lives of these internees who unjustly lost their homes, businesses and, sometimes, their families.

In 2005 I began searching for the identities of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans whose images of forced relocation were captured by Lange and the other War Relocation Authority photographers, including Clem Albers, Tom Parker and Francis Stewart. It’s a complicated and difficult task, as most of the photographs did not identify incarcerated subjects. During the past eight years I’ve photographed 25 of the original subjects, or their direct descendants, living in California, Oregon and Washington. Recently I’ve located 10 more subjects who need to be photographed. As each year passes we are losing the last Nisei generation along with their untold stories. More

Incarcerated at Heart Mountain: Three Boy Scouts Honor the American Flag (1943 and today) Incarcerated at Heart Mountain: Three Boy Scouts Honor the American Flag (1943 and today)

A Q&A with Paul Kitagaki, Jr. “Photography, Family History, and the Search for Missing Incarcerees” from Densho Blog

Kitagaki’s “Help Find Missing Internees” photo gallery.

How to Read Documentary Films

Child waiting to be taken to Manzanar April 1942 LC-DIG-fsa-8a31173

While many are aware that the US government forcibly removed and incarcerated more than 120,000 U.S. residents of Japanese ancestry during WWII. Few people know that the government recruited some of these same people to work at farm labor camps across the west to harvest crops essential to the war effort.

Uprooted from Uprooted Exhibit

Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps During World War II is a traveling photography exhibit (and website) that tells this story and provides a treasure trove of resources for historians, teachers and students. Uprooted draws from images of Japanese American farm labor camps taken by Russell Lee in the summer of 1942. Lee worked as a staff photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a federal agency that between 1935 and 1944 produced approximately 175,000 black-and-white film negatives and 1,600 color photographs.

I worked with the Uprooted team and developed a lesson How reliable are documentary films as a historic source? (Lesson Plan 2) The lesson begins with the teacher telling students that they are about to watch two short videos about the experience of some Japanese Americans during World War II.

The first video was made in 2014 by documentary filmmakers to accompany the Uprooted Exhibit. It features historic video from World War II as well as oral history interviews with Japanese Americans that the filmmakers shot in 2013 and 2014. The narration is taken from the interviews.

The second video was made in 1943 by the US government as an informational service to the US public. It features video shot in 1941 and 1942 and narration by a government official.  Before the videos are shown, the teacher asks the students which video they think will be a more reliable historical source. (Be sure to have them justify their thinking to their peers). Prompts include:

  • A video made in the era being studied or a video made over seventy years later?
  • A video made by the United States government or a video made by documentary filmmakers?
  • A video narrative by a government official or a video narrated by people who participated in the event?

The lesson then guides students through comparisons of both videos based on close reading strategies – what does the video say? how does it say it? what does it mean to me?

A complete lesson plan, collection of images and historic documents is available at Uprooted. A second lesson plan considers the question:  How reliable are documentary photographs as a historic source? (1.1, 1.2, 1.3) The site even includes a kit for students to curate their own Uprooted museum mini-exhibit.

You can find Uprooted on Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | Instagram

The museum exhibit open at The Four Rivers Cultural Center in Ontario, OR on September 12, 2014 and runs through December 12, 2014. It then travels to Minidoka County (ID) Historical Society and the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center in Portland Ore. More exhibit info and updates

I’d like to close this post by crediting the talented team behind Uprooted. Curator – Morgen Young, Web and Graphics Designer –Melissa Delzio, Videographers – Courtney Hermann and Kerribeth Elliott. Uprooted is a project of the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission.

Image credit:  Child waiting to be taken to Manzanar, April 1942, Los Angeles, California. Photographer Russell Lee. Library of Congress (Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USF33-013290-M4)

How to Read Documentary Photographs

Russell Lee Los Angeles 1942. LC-USF33-013296-M4

While many are aware that the US government forcibly removed and incarcerated more than 120,000 U.S. residents of Japanese ancestry during WWII. Few people know that the government recruited some of these same people to work at farm labor camps across the west to harvest crops essential to the war effort.

Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps During World War II is a traveling photography exhibit (and website) that tells this story and provides a treasure trove of resources for historians, teachers and students. Uprooted draws from images of Japanese American farm labor camps taken by Russell Lee in the summer of 1942. Lee worked as a staff photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a federal agency that between 1935 and 1944 produced approximately 175,000 black-and-white film negatives and 1,600 color photographs.

Many are familiar with the work of Lee’s colleague Dorothea Lange, who worked for the War Relocation Authority in 1942. Lee also made significant contributions to the photographic record of the Nikkei wartime experience. Between April and August of 1942, he took some six hundred images of Japanese Americans in California, Oregon, and Idaho, including rare documentation of farm labor camps. To explore all of Lee’s FSA photographs, visit the Library of Congress website.

Farm Labor ad from the Minidoka Irrigator (camp newspaper)

Uprooted also features video interviews with Japanese Americans who lived and worked in these seasonal farm labor camps as well as an archive of engaging historic documents from the era. Lee’s photographs depict smiling Japanese Americans cheerfully making the best of  farm work and living in tents. But the interviews and historic documents tell a different story – harsh fieldwork, substandard living conditions and local townspeople suspicious of these intruders and their “questionable loyalty.” Even the incarcerated Japanese Americans were divided about working in the farm labor camps. Some saw it as an better alternative than the barbed wire of camps like Manzanar or Minidoka. But others resisted after hearing stories of grueling “stoop” labor, primitive housing and hostile locals.  

While Uprooted focuses on a what some might consider a “footnote” of the US WWII homefront experience, I recognized that this rich collection could provide students with the material to develop historical thinking skills in sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating and close reading.

How does this collection of video interviews and historic documents help shed light on Lee’s intent? Was he trying to gloss over the harsh living and working conditions to help recruit more farm laborers? Was he trying to depict the noble and patriotic sacrifice of Japanese Americans forcibly stripped of their homes and livelihoods following the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese warplanes? Or did Lee simply shoot what he saw while on a photo assignment for the FSA? 

I worked with the Uprooted team and developed a lesson How reliable are documentary photographs as a historic source? (1.1 Teachers Guide, 1.2 Photographs, 1.3 Documents) Students begin by reflecting on the photographs they take and often share on social media. What do you see in the photographs? What stories do they tell? Next they are taken through scaffolded activities to closely examine Lee’s photographs and compare them to the often conflicting depictions of the farm labor camps found in the other historic documents. Finally they are asked to reconsider their contemporary social media photographs and how they might be interpreted by future historian studying “the life of a teenager in 2010s.” A complete lesson plan, collection of images and historic documents is available at Uprooted. The site even includes a kit for students to curate their own Uprooted museum mini-exhibit. A second lesson plan is also available. How reliable are documentary films as a historic source? Lesson plan 2. 

You can find Uprooted on Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | Instagram

The museum exhibit open at The Four Rivers Cultural Center in Ontario, OR on September 12, 2014 and runs through December 12, 2014. It then travels to Minidoka County (ID) Historical Society and the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center in Portland Ore. More exhibit info and updates

I’d like to close this post by crediting the talented team behind Uprooted. Curator – Morgen Young, Web and Graphics Designer – Melissa Delzio, Videographers - Courtney Hermann and Kerribeth Elliott. Uprooted is a project of the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission

Top Image credit: Library of Congress
Title: Los Angeles, California. The evacuation of Japanese-Americans from West Coast areas under U.S. Army war emergency order. Japanese-American family waiting for train to take them to Owens Valley
Creator(s): Lee, Russell, 1903-1986, photographer
Date Created/Published: 1942 Apr.
Medium: 1 negative : nitrate ; 35 mm.
Reproduction Number: LC-USF33-013296-M4

Newspaper Ad “You don’t need to wait any longer to get out.” From the Minidoka Irrigator.
Sugar companies posted recruitment notices and advertisements in public spaces throughout the camps, as well as in camp newspapers. Such advertisements emphasized seasonal labor as an opportunity to leave confines of camp, but also marketed the work as the patriotic duty of Japanese Americans, ignoring that they had been incarcerated and denied their civil liberties.
National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C., Record Group 210, War Relocation Authority.