Densho Digital Repository - Lon Inaba Interview

Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Lon Inaba Interview
Narrator: Lon Inaba
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Wapato, Washington Date: May 27, 2023
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-537

<Begin Segment 1>

TI: Today is Saturday, March 27, 2023. We are in Harrah, Washington, which is right outside of Wapato, which is kind of right outside of Yakima, so Eastern Washington. We're doing an interview with Lon Inaba, and I'm the interviewer, Tom Ikeda, and I'm doing this on behalf of Densho. And running the cameras we have Yuka Murakami and Kimi Engelbrecht. And so I'm going to get started, Lon. So thank you so much. Just for the viewer, we've spent several hours actually touring the Inaba farms as some background. But we'll just jump in. I want to start with you. So just tell me first, where and when were you born?

LI: I was born in Yakima, September 15, 1955.

TI: Okay. So that makes you sixty...

LI: Seven, yeah. Sixty-eight shortly, a couple months short of sixty-eight.

TI: I know this because I'm a January 1956, so I'm sixty-seven. So you're several months ahead of me. So we'll probably end up making some sort of age-appropriate references. What was the name given to you at birth?

LI: Lon Kerry Inaba.

TI: Any significance of "Lon" or "Kerry" that you know of?

LI: No. That's a question you could ask my mother. [Laughs]

TI: Okay, we're going to interview her right after this, so we could ask. And while we're here, tell me your siblings in birth order.

LI: Okay. I am the oldest. My brother Wayne is eighteen months younger, my brother Norm is another eighteen months younger. My sister Diane is five years younger than me, and my sister Terri is ten years younger than me.

TI: So there were five of you?

LI: Yes. And actually, there was a sixth that was kind of fit between Norman and Diane, I believe, and he was Gaylen, he's buried at the Tahoma cemetery.

TI: And it sounds like he passed away kind of at childbirth?

LI: Yeah, premature, yeah.

<Begin Segment 2>

TI: So what I thought we'd start with is to talk about your father's side of the family. And you're a Sansei and your dad was a Nisei. I actually want to go to the Issei generation, the generation that came from Japan to Yakima. So let's start with your grandfather. Can you tell me what your grandfather's name was?

LI: His name was Shukichi Inaba.

TI: And do you know about when he was born?

LI: I'm guessing he was probably born in the late 1800s, maybe 1890-something.

TI: I'm looking at my notes and yeah, actually, in the government records they had him born in 1887.

LI: Oh, okay.

TI: And Shukichi, and do you know what part of Japan?

LI: Kumamoto. I think it was Yamaga city in Kumamoto, I believe.

TI: And do you know what your grandfather's family did in Japan?

LI: They were farmers. And I think his father, my great grandfather, I think instructed kendo. So I don't know if that could be a profession, but I know that he was a kendo instructor. So I think he was like, that generation was one of the last samurai, but I know that he was a farmer, too. They were, my grandmother referred... because they both were from the same village, and my grandmother referred to them as "Higo Nogoshi." So Higo was the former name of Kumamoto, I believe. And I guess he said they were samurai farmers. So I guess they were farmers, samurai, because they were there to protect their lands.

TI: So the sense was that, so on your grandfather's side was kind of a little higher class in terms of having...

LI: Could have been. I don't know what that class structure was, but my grandmother's side, I know... yeah, they were probably both of the same social class.

TI: Do you know if your, on your grandfather's side, if they were landowners or were they...

LI: I believe they were. I actually visited Japan, I don't know, fifteen years ago, and one of my dad's cousins is still living on site as well as on my grandmother's side.

TI: As we were touring, you mentioned that your grandfather was educated also.

LI: Yes.

TI: Talk about that.

LI: Well, what my grandmother told me was he educated in, he had a degree in agriculture from the Imperial Agricultural College, and I don't know where that's at. But he was supposed to work in the royal gardens, but he decided to come to the United States instead.

TI: And do you know why he decided? Given his family background, the training, he was supposed to work in the royal gardens, why would he leave?

LI: Well, I think he was recruited by the Japanese Association to come and help the other Japanese immigrants farm, because he was educated. And my great grandfather on my mother's side, I think he happened to be the president of the Japanese Association in Yakima. And I'm sure he probably had something to do with inviting my grandfather to come to this country.

TI: Oh, interesting, okay. So he was essentially recruited from Yakima.

LI: I believe so, yeah.

TI: And about what year did your grandfather come to America?

LI: About 1907.

TI: Which is kind of an important date in that it was before the Gentleman's Agreement. I mean, he had to get here in some ways. If he was viewed as more of a laborer, he might have actually qualified as something different, though, because of his education. The common laborers at 1908, it was kind of a cutoff when they could come.

LI: Yeah. And I think the arrangement for the Japanese to the reservation, I think, was pretty formal. Because I see pictures of my grandfather and my great-grandfather with a lot of non-Japanese people all dressed up in fancy clothes. It appears that they're at some kind of a meeting or something like that, so I'm not sure what formal arrangements they had to bring the Japanese to this country.

TI: That's interesting. We're going to have to do more research, I'm curious about that.

<Begin Segment 3>

TI: You said something else in terms of, so your grandmother's father was part of the Japanese Association.

LI: Right.

TI: So your grandmother, it sounds like, was in Yakima before your grandfather?

LI: No. My great-grandfather, my grandmother's father, was in Yakima. He had left my grandmother and her sister in Japan to live with her grandfather, who was like a big landlord kind of guy. So he had a farm, he had a lumber mill, he had a silk farm, and he was also a samurai. He was kind of, because he didn't have anybody else to take over his operation, he was teaching my grandmother the ways of the samurai, as well as a way to manage the operation. And so she was the oldest of her siblings, and she and her younger sister remained in Japan while my great grandfather -- Kiyoshi Morikawa was his name -- he came to the U.S., I believe it was after the Russo-Japanese war.

TI: Early 1900s.

LI: Yeah. So I'm thinking closer to 1905. And it was kind of funny because my great, great-grandfather did not have any children. So he adopted his niece, (Kazue), to take over the family name, and then he adopted Kiyoshi to marry his niece. So I don't know how that works, and that's kind of the way it was with my grandmother, who kind of explained that. And so it's kind of different, I guess, but that's Japan.

TI: That's so interesting. But Kiyoshi, rather than staying in Japan to kind of do things, he came to Yakima.

LI: Oh, yeah.

TI: And do you know why he came to Yakima?

LI: I think he was, like, quite adventurous, and coming from an affluent family. He actually had a manservant in the Russo-Japanese War. [Laughs] So what a manservant does in a war, I don't know. So I think that he came to the United States for adventure. And my grandmother was kind of upset about it, so she would always tell me that he was a playboy, (probably because he left her and her younger sister in Japan while he left for America).

TI: Okay. So she was talking about her father?

LI: Her father, yeah.

TI: So she was in Japan with her younger sister, you said, and her father was out traipsing around.

LI: Right.

TI: Furthermore, he was actually talking to her future husband because he recruited him to come to Yakima and probably got to know him in Yakima.

LI: No, he got... I think they were friends in Japan.

TI: Oh, in Japan.

LI: Because I think they were about the same age. So my guess, and when I visited Japan, they were both in the same village. So my guess is they were friends in Japan. And so when Kiyoshi came to the U.S., and it was kind of weird because my grandmother always told me that her grandfather, her father, Kiyoshi, was a playboy. And so when I thought, wow... and when John Baule from the Yakima Museum told me, "Oh, did you know he was the first president of the Yakima Japanese Association?" I thought, "Oh, how could that be? He was a playboy." [Laughs] But then I read somewhere else that said, "Oh, those Japanese associations were first formed as social clubs," and so then it made sense. But my mother, my grandmother always talked about him as a playboy. [Laughs]

<Begin Segment 4>

TI: And since we're talking about your grandmother, tell me her name.

LI: Her name was Shigeko Morikawa.

TI: Okay. So your dad's here with Shigeko's father.

LI: My grandfather, yeah.

TI: Grandfather, and they're here. So how does she come to Yakima? How does she marry your father?

LI: My grandfather? Well, my grandfather came to this reservation, this is the Yakama Reservation, and he broke ground out of sagebrush, and he and his brother Tomoji worked together to clear 120 acres of ground on the reservation. And I'm told that Japanese pioneers were credited with breaking over 20 thousand acres of ground out of sagebrush on the Yakama Reservation. And so because he was Japanese, because of the alien land laws at the time, he could not become a citizen. And because he could not become a citizen, he could not own land. So when other growers in the area were settling the ground and breaking things out of sagebrush, they might buy it for a buck an acre, cleared the sagebrush but they owned it. The Japanese could not become citizens, so they could not own the land. So I don't know how he came to the reservation and why, but I'm suspecting that he was recruited, the whole Japanese community was recruited in some kind of organized fashion. Because Kiyoshi and the people in Yakima, Kiyoshi came to Yakima and he had a hotel and a candy store. And there was a block in Yakima that was set up with stores and hotels, laundry facilities, Japanese grocery stores. And I believe that they were set up to accept the immigrants who were coming to break the ground out of sagebrush on the Yakama Reservation. The town of Yakima is not on the reservation. So I believe they settled first in Yakima and then once they got set up, they were there to house and to equip the immigrants coming to break the ground out of sagebrush.

TI: So this is your great grandfather who had the store.

LI: Yes.

[Interruption]

TI: So Lon, we were just talking about, you said, this area and historic Yakima where there was a concentration of Japanese businesses set up. And you were going to talk about where that was located. And this was your great grandfather had, you said, a candy store?

LI: Yeah, a candy store and a hotel. And so, yeah, there was a number of Japanese businesses in that area. That was located south of Yakima Avenue, west of South First Street, east of Front Street, and north of Chestnut. So it was a one-block area, and just kind of across the tracks from where the Chinese community was. And both of those communities were closely located to the railway, which makes sense for that time of the century.

TI: And so your great grandfather was a real pioneer for the Japanese community in this area, Yakima, and it was early. Because given his age, so he was a little bit, probably, older than most people, too.

LI: Well, I'm guessing he's probably pretty close in age to my grandfather, maybe slightly older. Because there was an eighteen year difference between my grandmother and my grandfather. And so when my grandfather, I guess, broke the ground out of sagebrush with horses, 1920 was probably the peak of his career. You know, he had a Stevens car, he had a tractor, he had the second fastest hitch in the valley, and that was when he went back to Japan and brought my grandma back. And so part of the deal was, since she was coming from quite a privileged background, was that she wanted to come to this country and only if she could study to be a concert pianist. And so when she came back, she spent like two weeks shopping in Seattle, and she spent some time in the gardens of Masahiro Furuya. And so Masahiro Furuya had like a vacation home for his employees on Bainbridge Island. And so I have pictures of her in Furuyas' gardens there, and so she spent two weeks in that Seattle area shopping, and then she came and spent six months, and spent six months studying music and voice from a Professor Dow, and his partner was Toll, and they were in the city of Yakima. And so Professor Dow was a piano instructor, and Toll was a voice instructor. And so coming from a privileged household in Japan, and then spending the time shopping and doing all that stuff, they also... my grandfather bought her a piano for their wedding present. And for their honeymoon, they got in their Stevens car and went with several of his friends. I think Mr. Matsushita and possibly his brother were also, they also had some pretty fancy cars, and they took a trip to Yellowstone Park. And from what John Ball, our Yakima Valley Museum former director told me, that was the first car caravan from the Yakima area to Yellowstone Park. And I have a few pictures of people on that caravan as well, so they were very affluent.

<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Well, yeah, and before you move on, I just want to capture this. So this is like, you said around 1920, you said it was the height of this. And so your grandfather went back to Japan to marry your mother and bring her back.

LI: My grandmother, yes.

TI: Grandmother, I'm sorry, your grandmother. She was about eighteen years younger. And from her perspective, she probably had other choices or other options, but it sounds like your grandfather was doing well enough that it was, she agreed to doing this.

LI: Oh, yeah.

TI: That she could study piano, voice, go to this country. Was her father, your great grandfather, still in Yakima at this time?

LI: At the time they came back, yes.

TI: Okay, so he was there, too. Because this is kind of -- and we're going to get into this -- right before, in the state of Washington, things like the alien land laws...

LI: Yeah, before they changed it.

TI: Changed things. But the other thing I want to just mention, from what I've read, and you recommended a book called The Burning Horse, there was still a lot of anti-Japanese racism in this area during this time period. In some ways, when I read the book, it was sort of a hotbed for a lot of that. So it wasn't all peaches and cream even though they were doing quite well.

LI: Well, and I think in those early 1900s, there weren't a lot of other people in the area besides the Japanese and a few Caucasian growers and the tribal people. But I think the people who came later resented the success of the Japanese and they wanted access to the ground that the Japanese were farming. Because they really were the pioneers in this area, and I think that some of the other immigrants were the ones who really kind of tried to figure out, well, how do we get those lands?

TI: And that kind of led, not only in the state of Washington, but up and down the West Coast and then even further to other western states, the alien land laws which prevented Japanese from owning and leasing land.

LI: Yeah. I think the alien land law initially said that they could not own land, they could not become citizens. But then I think in the state of Washington, I think it started in California, then moved up to Oregon and to Washington, they changed it. And they said, okay, now, even though they couldn't initially own land, they rented it and they broke it out of sagebrush. But now they modified that alien land law to say, "If you're Japanese, you can't lease land either." And so that was when they lost the ground that they broke out of sagebrush and became sharecroppers.

TI: Before you move on there, there's one thing I want to pick up we were talking earlier, that I wanted to capture. When your grandfather and -- I'm sorry -- yeah, your grandfather and his brother were breaking the land of sagebrush, they were leasing these plots of land to do this. Generally, do you know how long those leases were when they would lease the land?

LI: Boy, that's kind of surprising. I'm not really sure, but I would guess probably five-year time period.

TI: Because you said something in terms of breaking the land, about how Japanese cleared, I think it's like over twenty thousand acres.

LI: Correct.

TI: So I'm wondering, like I know in Western Washington, in Bellevue, the Japanese farmers were doing these five acre, five year leases, but after they cleared the land of stumps, they needed to move on to the next five year and do it again? So they literally cleared all the land in that Bellevue area. But it wasn't like they were keeping it, they had to keep moving on. And I was wondering if that was a similar thing in Yakima.

LI: You know, I don't think so. I think that initially the Japanese were allowed to renew those leases. And besides my grandfather, on the site that we were at early this morning, there were a good handful of very large Japanese farmers during that 1920 era. And I think those are the ones that were probably targeted the most. Because that was some of the most productive ground out there. And I think there's a lot of folks who wanted to take that over.

<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So let's go and talk a little bit about the impact of the alien land laws on your family and the other Japanese farmers in this area.

LI: Well, when they had to let go of their leases, well, initially, the Indian agent was Don Carr, and he kind of resisted. And he said, "You know, this is a federal reservation. We're not subject to the state laws." And a lot of the tribal people kind of stuck up for the Japanese leasing because they were very good lessees to the tribal members. And they got along very well, and I think had a lot of respect for the tribal people. And so a lot of the tribal people spoke in favor of not removing the Japanese, but the Department of Interior secretary was Albert Fall. And so what he did is he stepped in and removed Don Carr, who was kind of resisting the resisting the state law, and replaced him with somebody who would implement the state law. And once that was implemented, all the Japanese essentially lost what they had broke out of sagebrush, and they became sharecroppers. And if it were not for the kindness of their tribal friends and neighbors or their Caucasian friends and neighbors who allowed them to farm portions of their properties, they probably wouldn't have survived out there, they would have had to leave.

TI: And so was it a case that it was pretty much the same land that they, but it shifted from the Japanese actually leasing and controlling it, that they just now became the sharecroppers for pretty much the same land?

LI: Well, for my family it wasn't the same land, it was other parcels of land that their friends had control of. And it was really kind of... I guess it was illegal for people to even let the Japanese sublease. And so my grandmother said it was like farming like a mole under the ground. [Laughs]

TI: So explain that. Farming like a mole underground?

LI: It's a subversive kind of way to do things. You're kind of doing it, you weren't doing it, everything wasn't above board. You were kind of getting around things by doing this, but it was because the friendship that they had with their neighbors that allowed them to continue farming. I mean, it wasn't at the same scale that they were used to farming. Instead of 120 acres of ground like they were farming with hay, wheat and potatoes, they had to convert to what my grandmother would call the mizumono crops. So, like, mizu is water, and so they're water loving, labor intensive crops of cantaloupes and tomatoes and watermelons, rather than potatoes and wheat and hay like they were used to growing.

TI: And were those water loving crops, what was the distinction of these water loving crops? Are they more difficult or they're...

LI: Oh, yeah, they're more difficult to grow, but more labor and more management intensive crops. But they were a higher return per acre so they could use a smaller acreage and still survive. But they couldn't really thrive like they were with the larger acreage.

TI: So going through kind of this land transfer that was happening because of the alien land laws, so in the case of your family, they weren't able to, after the alien land laws, lease and farm that land they were doing before that. Who took over that land? Who ended up farming, leasing and farming that land after your family left?

LI: That I couldn't tell you.

TI: Because I'm trying to get a sense of, so who benefited in the Yakima Valley when this happened?

LI: Well, the excuse that they used was they said we want to make room for the returning World War I veterans, okay, and the Japanese were occupying all the good land. And so my guess is it's probably the later folks who came in the '30s who were jealous, or the later '20s, that were jealous of what the Japanese had acquired. They came after the Japanese. But I don't know.

TI: So I'm curious, I'm thinking of some things I read in the book The Burning Horse. And so this transition kind of happened. And what some of these new farmers didn't realize was how hard it was to farm in the Yakima Valley. I mean, previously, you were talking about how well your grandfather was doing in the farm, and they were doing well. But when others started taking over the land, doing it, a lot of them did not succeed, and they were only here for a short period of time before they actually left. I mean, was that something... I read that in the book, and I was just curious, does that seem true?

LI: It makes sense. Farming's not easy, especially if people are coming to the country or from out of the area. And everything looks easy from the outside, but when you actually have to make a crop and make sure you're doing all these operations in the right order in a timely process, it's not as easy as it looks. And so it wouldn't be hard for me to see people becoming very disenchanted with farming and looking for an easy way to make a living.

TI: Yeah, so it's these newcomers who maybe have some resentment and they wanted this land, it sounds like quite a few of them actually didn't succeed and had to move on. So going back to your family, so this is early 1920s, it's a great story about your grandmother coming and doing the piano lessons, the voice lessons. But fairly shortly, she started, they started raising a family.

LI: Oh, yeah.

<Begin Segment 7>

TI: And so can you talk about the children? This would include your father, but uncles and aunts that you had. I mean, as much as you can remember, kind of the birth order of the children?

LI: Yeah, my dad's oldest brother was Sheane, and he was born on the piece of ground that my grandfather broke out of sagebrush. But shortly after that, they had to start moving. And so my dad was born on the first piece of ground that they farmed when they had to become sharecroppers. And at that time, fertilizers weren't invented. We didn't have mega dairies. And so the nutrition on the farm had to come through soil building. And so the leases said at any one time, a certain portion of that ground that you leased had to be planted to alfalfa hay. And so those crops that my grandfather initially started with, hay, wheat and potatoes, hay and wheat were the soil building kind of crops. They would deep root it, they would mine and bring nutrients up, and the potatoes were the money crop. And so because they didn't farm large acres, they couldn't do the alfalfa hay to build soil, and so they couldn't rotate those crops. And so because of that, they just rotated among these miscellaneous chop suey vegetables, the mizumono crops, and soon the soils were depleted and production was significantly lower. And so what they would have to do is they would have to move. So every four or five years, they would have to pack up and move and start over again. And so it was really difficult for those pioneers, and it was really a definite change in the way of life that my grandmother had expected to come to.

TI: That's what, yeah, I was curious. Did you hear stories? I mean, how did she handle the shift? Because it sounded like she came with certain expectations. And actually we're talking about the children, but let's keep going, because she had a lot of children.

LI: Yeah. Yeah, my dad was second, and his name was Ken. And after my dad was, his brother was Kay. After Kay...

TI: Probably Tamaki?

LI: Yeah, I believe Tamaki. And after Tamaki was Gilbert, and then after Gilbert was Reiko, and after Reiko was George.

TI: So two, four, six, seven kids?

LI: Yeah, sounds like it. And somewhere in the middle there, there was a Sanaye. And Sanaye I believe did not survive more than a year.

TI: Childhood. Okay. So going back to your grandmother, so she went from only agreeing to come to the United States because she could study music and voice and be with this affluent farmer, and now she had seven kids, and the farming business is a lot harder. So let's talk about that, what you know about that life.

LI: Well, the one thing she didn't lose was the piano. So all three of those years somehow they managed to hang on to the piano. And so she got to play the piano, but nothing was easy. Nothing was easy, and my uncle Sheane, he built -- I guess he was one of the guys, he helped to build these, like a bunkhouse that they lived in, and they put it on wheels. And so I don't know how late it was, but because they had to move so often, that was probably one of the first moves or... it's a house on wheels.

TI: Because every, as you're saying, after four or five years, they moved because the land kind of gave out, and they had to...

LI: Yeah, and the nutrition was depleted for those crops, and that's what we do, we have to rotate crops on our current farming operation, because if you don't, you have disease pressures or nutrient problems and things like that. So your productivity is greatly diminished.

<Begin Segment 8>

TI: And you were talking, we talked a little bit earlier, it was really difficult, and it sounds difficult, and yet you said as difficult as it was, the tribe, in allowing them to farm, without that, it would be have been ever harder.

LI: Oh, yeah. Well, they had Caucasian friends and neighbors, but also tribal friends and neighbors. And without the support of their friends, they probably wouldn't have stuck around.

TI: So in terms of the hierarchy in the valley at this time, you had... I guess, where did your family and other Japanese families fit in the hierarchy in terms of the whole valley? When I think of... you had the whites, you have the tribes, you have the Japanese. I mean, talk about that in terms of...

LI: Well, my guess is you had the Caucasian population, and then you had everybody else. I think that the tribal folks and the Japanese and the other immigrant groups probably felt that they were pretty much the same. But it was, the Caucasian population was, just felt that they were above everybody else.

TI: But it sounds like, even though, in terms of the Japanese and tribes, the tribes had the lands, right?

LI: Yes.

TI: And the Japanese didn't have that.

LI: Yeah, but the tribes, they were subsisting on... the rents were not that high. And so they were hunter-gatherers, and so I don't think they were really as money-conscious as other populations, you know. I think they were happy to live the way that they were living. And if everybody left them alone, they would probably still be happy. But they just got along. I think it's respect. The tribal people and the Japanese people, I think, had a lot of mutual respect. And there are stories about my grandpa loaning his .30-30 to my landlords, and they would go to the mountains and they would bring back deer and elk, and they would share it with them. And so don't think that they really felt that they were below or above the tribal people, I think they were just their friends. And they mutually respected each other. And so I don't think... they were all poor, you know. They were all poor. And so when you got poor people, what's the difference between the level of poorness? [Laughs]

TI: So we were in the '20s, it was really hard, then the Depression, late '20s, early '30s hit, I'm guessing it still remained really difficult during those years.

LI: Oh, yeah, very difficult.

TI: And so prewar Inaba family, it sounds like, when you talk about the mobile bunkhouse and things, it was kind of a difficult life.

LI: Oh, it was terrible. Yeah, it was really tough. But yet, the Japanese students excelled in Wapato High School. Education was always important, and my dad and his siblings and the other Japanese children, they would go to regular school during the day, and after school they would go to Japanese school at the Japanese Association building.

TI: And where was the Japanese Association building?

LI: That was right... it was right next to the Buddhist church. And on the other side of the Buddhist church was a Japanese Methodist church.

TI: And this was in Yakima?

LI: This is in Wapato.

TI: Wapato, okay.

LI: Wapato really was the center of the Japanese community, but the Buddhist church was in Wapato and there was a branch of the Buddhist church in Yakima and a branch in Toppenish. And so, but the main Buddhist church was in Wapato, and I believe that was built around 1929.

<Begin Segment 9>

TI: That's interesting. When you said that, it reminded me of a comment, again, from the author of the Burning Horse that Wapato, he mentioned, was also a hotbed, or perhaps even a focus of the Ku Klux Klan.

LI: Oh, yeah.

TI: That there was a large chapter, perhaps one of the largest maybe in Washington state was in Wapato. And so...

LI: Yeah. I don't know if it was a big gathering, is what they had, and I think they said there was like five hundred people came to this Klan meeting. And the Black community was just right north of the Japanese community where the Buddhist church and the Japanese Association stands. And they also got along with the Japanese community. And so Tommy Uchida was one of the Nisei members of our church. And when I asked him what happened, he said the Klan gathering, they had this Klan gathering, and the city fathers of Wapato came marching down the street with chains and clubs, chasing the Black people out of these cabins and tents. And when Tommy found one of his Black friends, he asked him, "What happened?" He goes, "We had to run for our lives. We couldn't take anything, we just had to run." And so the city fathers of Wapato pretty much chased all the Blacks out of that community.

TI: What an incredible story in terms of what Wapato was. As I'm listening to the story, there's the Black community, the Japanese community, the tribes, the whites, a segment of the whites, members of the Ku Klux Klan, it was a very colorful, interesting, divisive period, and just right next to where we are right now.

LI: Oh, yeah, not far.

TI: And your family kind of lived through -- I mean not only lived, and we'll keep going, but the ups and downs. There were times in the '20s, before '20s, thriving and struggling and raising a family, the Nisei generation, and we'll get to the war and then postwar. So this really does sound like a movie to me, this is pretty amazing. So let's go to World War II. I mean, what happened to the Inaba family? So it's your grandparents, and they have seven children. George was born in 1937, so he's kind of a very young child when the war starts. Sheane is quite a big older, maybe in high school at this point?

LI: Right, yeah. Sheane was, he was the valedictorian of Wapato High School for his senior class. And when the country of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, they implemented Executive Order 9066 that said all persons of Japanese descent were to be evacuated from the West Coast. And prior to the evacuation, the Japanese and Yakima didn't expect to be shipped out, because the proclamation said they were supposed to be, the border was supposed to be the crest of the Cascade ranges. But they had these Tolan Committee hearings talking about the evacuation and the granges and the VWF were lobbying to move that border from the crest of the Cascade range to the Columbia River. And so they were successful in implementing that.

<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Okay, so Lon, you were just talking about this pressure to change the, where the line for the exclusion zone was rather than the crest of the Cascades. Which from a Washingtonian, it makes sense because we kind of divide the state into Western Washington and Eastern Washington, by that crest. And when I give talks, they said, "Oh, yeah, Eastern Washington wasn't effective," but that's not really true. That's not really accurate because it wasn't the crest of the Cascades, it was changed.

LI: It was supposed to be the crest of the Cascades, but the granges and the VFW lobbied to move that border to the Columbia River. And so my grandfather and his buddies in the Yakima Valley, they were encouraged. They didn't know they were getting evacuated, so they were encouraged by George DeWitt to be patriotic and to plant those crops, because we needed the food to support the war effort. And the Japanese community always wanted to show their patriotism, and so they planted. And if you're a grower, other people might not realize it, but when you plant a crop, everything you own goes into that next year's crop. And so when they were evacuated, it was pretty close to this time of year. The end of May, first of June, they had like seven days to dispose of everything they owned. And when everybody's trying to dispose of everything they own within seven days in the entire Japanese community, you're not going to get a premium for your stuff. And so a lot of people just burned stuff. Some people buried it.

TI: And you're saying burned or buried their possessions or crops?

LI: Their possessions, well, yeah. And Margie Hattori was one of my dad's friends. She said as a kid she remembers bringing everything Japanese and burning it in the trash barrel in front of their house. And so because they didn't what was going to happen, they didn't know if people would throw 'em in jail, they didn't know anything. They were scared. And so it was a tough time, and they could take only what they could carry.

<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Earlier you were talking about Sheane, and he's the valedictorian, and your dad was in high school. So they were old enough to kind of see what was going on. Any stories about maybe your dad and Sheane or any of the other siblings, Nisei siblings, and stories of how they dealt with the exclusion orders? Now we have to leave.

LI: Well, my uncle Sheane was the valedictorian. Because of the executive order and they had these proclamations that set these curfews as well. And so he couldn't, he was the valedictorian, but he couldn't go to his own graduation. Nine out of the top ten in that class were Japanese, so none of those guys got to go to the graduation ceremonies. My dad was a junior, and he raised his hand, and he said, "Didn't we just take U.S. history? Aren't we American citizens? We've never been to Japan in our lives." And he said, "We're at war with Germany, we're at war with Italy, how come those guys aren't getting removed?" I mean, he was pretty vocal. But, you know, didn't really do a heck of a lot of good.

[Interruption]

TI: Okay, so let me start this up. So we're now just talking about your father standing up in class and just saying, "Hey, we just took U.S. history, how can this be happening to us?"

LI: Yeah. Well, and their answer was, "We're doing it for your protection." And when he got to camp, he would say, "Well, how come the barbed wire's facing in and the guards in the towers are watching us?" [Laughs]

TI: Exactly. "Why are the guns pointed in and not out?"

LI: Right, right.

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: But before we go to camp, I want to go back to the farm. You talked about how the farmers were essentially told, "Plant your crops as part of the war effort, be loyal Americans." And you're saying when farmers do that, they're putting everything into the ground to do that. And you're saying, but the exclusion orders and the time to leave, it was a time when the crops were still in the ground.

LI: Oh, yeah, they had just planted all their crops. And when they were evacuated, the guy who took over their farm actually harvested like the very next day. He started harvesting peas the very next day. And he said, "Oh, yeah, I'll share the crop with you," but he never did.

TI: So that's what happened to your family?

LI: Yeah, they lost everything they had.

TI: So who took it over? Who did your father, or not your father, but grandfather find to...

LI: Well, the guy who took it over was the produce broker that my grandfather was selling to, and his name was Ken Lynch. So my aunt (Tamaki) was really ticked off at this guy. My grandma's term -- and it probably helped them to persevere -- the term that she used was "shikata ga nai." And so I guess it means, I asked her, "What does that mean?" and she goes, "It cannot be helped." Kind of like, you know, you just got to live with it and go on. And so I don't know how many times they probably had to use that terminology to their children, but tough, very tough.

TI: What about all the equipment, the possessions, the mobile bunkhouse if that was still around, what happened to all of that stuff?

LI: Well, I think they tried to dispose of whatever they can. But if you only have seven days, you're not going to get much. And so I'm guessing that whatever didn't get sold was just left with the property.

TI: And at this point, for the Inaba family, now well into the second generation, the family didn't own any land.

LI: No. Because by the time my uncle's, my oldest uncle was old enough to sign, that was when they were being evacuated. Just prior to evacuation, my dad's cousin Joe, who was Tomoji �Inaba's son, was old enough. And he signed for some of their land, and so that when my grandma said, "Oh, that was JT Inaba, ranch number two." And so some of the older Niseis were old enough to sign the leases, and if they had enough money, they could buy, but not the Shukichi Inaba family.

TI: So when we think about 1941, '42, roughly how many Japanese and Japanese Americans were in the valley?

LI: I think a thousand were evacuated from the valley, a little bit over a thousand. And so really it's a pretty big number. Because when I see pictures of my dad's grade schools, some of those classes had about a quarter Japanese in them. So that's a pretty good population of Japanese in the community.

TI: Okay. So we're not going to spend a whole bunch of time other than I've done interviews of Niseis who were from the Wapato/Yakima area, and so we already kind of had the stories of going from here to the Portland Assembly Center.

LI: Right, right.

TI: But before I go there, there's something, when I think about the interviews I did years ago about that, I've come to discover there was actually -- I'm just curious if you know anything about this -- there were plans and actually some construction of an assembly center that was supposed to be in Toppenish. Have you ever heard about that?

LI: No.

TI: Yeah, there was an assembly center that was actually built, but it was built so poorly or there were other problems that they never opened it. There was a planned assembly center in Toppenish.

LI: Huh, I did not know that.

TI: Yeah. And so our historian, Brian Niiya, came across that, and I thought that was really interesting. Because the people from Wapato, the Yakima area, they were transported all the way to Portland in Oregon, kind of the west side, and then from there, they would then generally go to Heart Mountain.

LI: Right.

TI: And so it was kind of a long trek. And it was kind of interesting that it seems like it kept the Wapato people together. Because a lot of people that were at the Portland Assembly Center went to Minidoka, but the Wapato community went to Heart Mountain.

LI: Yeah.

<Begin Segment 13>

TI: So tell me, is that where the Inaba family or your dad, is that where he went?

LI: Yes. And you know, because the Yakima Valley people had broken ground out of sagebrush on the reservation, they actually helped to clear land and establish irrigation systems at Heart Mountain as well. And so I think, as well as the other inductees to that relocation center or concentration camp, whatever you want to call it, I'm sure the people from California participated as well. But I know that the Japanese from the valley were very well-versed in clearing sagebrush and breaking ground out of sagebrush and putting in the irrigation systems. And what they said was there were complaints from outside of camp that the Japanese in the camp were eating better than the people outside of camps. And so the explanation from the camp management was, well, they're growing their own crops. And I think they did so well that they actually sent crops out of Heart Mountain to other relocation centers and they shared that. And so, yeah, they were obviously good farmers.

TI: Any family stories from either Portland Assembly Center or Heart Mountain with your dad that come to mind, or your grandparents?

LI: Well, I think my dad didn't really spend that much time there, nor did Sheane. Because of the war effort, there was labor shortages all over the place. And they had Japanese farm worker camps in southern Idaho, and they were recruited to go to those camps. Because if you take all the Japanese out of the West Coast, somebody's got to grow the food that they had done back then. And so they recruited them to help the Treasure Valley growers produce their crops. And so I have photos, and I think there are a lot of the internees were recruited out of the relocation centers into neighboring...

TI: No, that's interesting that your dad and uncle from Heart Mountain, went all the way to the Treasure Valley, because that's really close to Minidoka. And so I've done a lot of interviews on Minidoka, and you're right, a lot of them were recruited for the local farming. I didn't realize it came as far as Heart Mountain.

LI: Well, I think the Treasure Valley was a rich farming area, and so there was a lot of growers doing the same kind of things. And so I don't know what kind of climate you have in Wyoming to grow a lot of crops, and so I think that's why they had to come that far to work.

<Begin Segment 14>

TI: Okay, so let's go after Heart Mountain. What did your grandparents do after they left Heart Mountain?

LI: Well, my dad and my grandfather were some of the first to leave Heart Mountain and return to the valley. Probably only ten percent actually returned to the Yakima valley.

TI: See, I was going to ask you about that. Because a very low percentage returned to the valley. In general, it's interesting, we look at the statistics. I mean, in general, fewer people returned, Japanese Americans returned to Washington state than places like California. But even within the state of Washington, Yakima, the return rate was really, really low.

LI: Well, because their neighbors kicked them out. You know, their neighbors, prior to evacuation, people were burning down houses and really doing pretty bad things. The Japanese Association building burned to the ground mysteriously. And so a lot of things were going on that, if people are treated you like that, why do you want to return?

TI: Did your dad ever tell you any stories about that kind of treatment in Wapato?

LI: I heard stories about so and so's barn got burned down, so and so's workers were intimidated, and there was a lot of those kind of stories.

TI: So when your grandfather and your father, one of the first ones to return to the valley, what was it like for them? I mean, what did they do? Because, one, they had no land, were they able to, were their possessions here like farm equipment and things?

LI: Well, some of their things must have been here. They went back to get their car, which was stored at Matson Motors. And so Don Matson, that was the first thing they went to do, and Don Matson said, "Why'd you Japs come back?" And so when they got their car, it was new when it went into storage, and when they took it out, it was pretty much beat up, obviously had been used pretty heavily. And so they left, and they went to Logan's Feed, he was the local feed and seed dealer, and it was a hundred percent different. Wilbur Logan pretty much told him, he goes, "Take whatever you need, pay me whenever you can." And he reached into his pocket and grabbed the keys for a brand new Dodge truck, and handed it to my dad and said, "Pay me whenever you can." [Laughs] And so when you see that kind of generosity, that kind of kindness, we bought seed from the guy 'til he died. And we continue to buy seed from his grandson to this day. Yeah, and it was tough. My dad had stories of sitting down with his friend at the local cafe, and he would sit there for a half an hour and nobody would serve them. And so eventually they got, walked up and left. But there were signs all over the place that said, "No Jap trade wanted." But people like Wilbur Logan were really super great to him. Esther Boyd, who, her family owned the local hardware store, were also very nice, very supportive of the Japanese. Orchardist Dan McDonald, he took several Japanese families under his wing, and he had stored things from him. His grandson Paul, I think they still have some stuff that his grandfather had stored for Japanese families. And so... but those kind of people were pretty rare, pretty special. But my dad and my grandfather went to the tribal landlord, who they were leasing ground from. And it was the Hoptowit family, and they had leased ground from the Hoptowit family for a number of years prior to the war. And so when they were evacuated, they came back to that place that they were farming prior to evacuation, and they asked, "Can we re-lease this piece of ground?" And Fred Hoptowit and his brother, they said, "Well, you know, we don't have that piece of ground available," but I kind of pointed out that piece over by Leo Gasseling's and he said, "We have that parcel, you're welcome to lease that." And so if it wasn't for the Hoptowit family making that offer, maybe we wouldn't have stuck around.

TI: So it sounds like really, in terms of the, I'll call it kindness of a few people, that allowed your grandfather and father to get reestablished. The story of the seed guy and the hardware guy and the land. And I'm guessing it must have been difficult in these first years after the war.

LI: Oh, man. That was kind of the history of the Japanese in this community, you know, but I always heard this thing that said, "If it doesn't kill you, it makes you tougher," and I kind of believe that. The Japanese ideals of perseverance and the term gaman, right, it's like of like, "Don't give up." You fall down, you get up, and you keep going. I think those are the principles that my dad went by, with the shikata ga nai term that my grandma kept telling me. It can't be helped, you just get up and go, go back to work.

<Begin Segment 15>

TI: I'm glad you're telling this story. Because again, we started the interview talking about how, before this interview, you gave us a tour of Inaba Farms, and it is quite the operation. And to think, right after the war, there was essentially nothing. I mean, you're starting from really ground zero. Other than, I guess, the reputation and friendships your grandfather had made, so some of these people knew him well enough to work with him and do these things. So it started off with your grandfather and father. Who else eventually, I mean, the rest of the family, what about the other Niseis, did anyone else show up?

LI: Well, my uncle Sheane, I think, came and farmed for a little while. But I think they lost their firstborn child and they kind of decided to go do something else. Gilbert and Tamaki and Reiko and George and Kay, you know, my dad was going to Laramie, Wyoming, I think, during the war years. I think he was trying to get, he wanted to be an electrical engineer. So he took some classes back then, but that was about all the education he had. He didn't have enough time or funds to do that. But when he came back, he helped to operate the farm and helped to make sure that his siblings all had the opportunity to go to college, most of them WSU. [Laughs]

TI: So let me... so your dad never got a college education?

LI: No.

TI: But the other Nisei siblings did?

LI: Yes.

TI: So it sounds like he, in some ways, sacrificed himself so the others could do that.

LI: And he hung around with my grandfather and my grandmother to make sure that they were well taken care of.

TI: Yeah, okay. So essentially, because Sheane didn't stay, he played kind of the oldest son role in many ways.

LI: Yeah, I think so. And I think Sheane had opportunities because he was in the military. And I think for the returning veterans, they had some opportunities, and I think he had the opportunity to go to college through, I don't know if it was the GI Bill or anything, but it was something that was related to the military service.

<Begin Segment 16>

TI: So, Lon, we'll start up again. And it's after the war, your dad and your grandfather returned to Yakima, they're starting up, and I guess the question was, the rest of the family coming back, and you were talking about that. So who else came back? And in some ways, at that point, where did they live?

LI: You know, that's a damn good question.

TI: You showed us the plot of land that they farmed.

LI: Yeah, that they came back to.

TI: They lived where they...

LI: Yeah, they generally did. And there was a house on that piece that I just showed you prior to lunch. And my guess is they must have moved into that house. And it was a two-holer, but they didn't have any indoor plumbing, so they had a two-hole outhouse out there.

TI: Yeah, I know what the term was, I was a little surprised. I guess, yeah.

LI: And so they didn't have indoor plumbing. I'm not sure... they must have built the bathhouse. So they had an ofuro in there, a wood fired ofuro. And I remember going there as a kid, this is quite a bit later, and then after just returning from the war. But she had a kitchen, and I think she had a wood stove in the kitchen for heat. But yeah, they had the outhouse. And until my grandmother moved to Los Angeles in the '60s, she did not have indoor plumbing.

TI: Oh, interesting. So your grandfather never had indoor plumbing?

LI: No.

TI: And so it was after he had passed away...

LI: Yeah, he died in, like, '65, I believe.

TI: Well, that seems actually a long time not to have indoor plumbing.

LI: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, they were poor. It's not like they had any kind of wealth when they came back. They just started over again and I think a lot of the extra money they had went into educating my dad's siblings. And I'm sure they got scholarships and things like that, but going to college even with scholarships is pretty expensive.

TI: Well, so the house, the home we are in now where your... okay, this is where your mother... okay, I'm confusing that generation. So we're talking about your grandmother, and so they were there. But going back to your father after the war, so picking up your family's story. So after farming for a while, he meets your mother.

LI: Yeah, at a Buddhist church convention, I believe.

TI: Yeah, in Spokane. And we won't go into that because we're going to interview her after we finish you, so we'll get that story. But I'm kind of fast forwarding to the children, you and your siblings. So why don't we pick it up there? You told us you were born in 1955, and you told me about your siblings. You're the oldest, so you're kind of a Sansei baby boomer that grew up in this area. And so let's talk about some of your early childhood memories of actually growing up in the house that we're in.

LI: Well, this wasn't the house that we grew up in, I grew up in. But when I was young, we lived in the house that was on the place when my dad bought this parcel of land in 1954. And so we did have a toilet, we did have indoor plumbing. And, but I think there was only two bedrooms, and we had, at the time we were living there, I had all my siblings except for Terri, she was the youngest.

TI: So this is a two-bedroom home, and how many siblings?

LI: Oh, yeah. We had four siblings -- I had three siblings and myself.

TI: So it got pretty crowded.

LI: It was pretty crowded, but we were kind of young back then. But we never felt like we were wealthy, I always felt we were poor. And we got on, but we still had plenty of food, we still had clothing. I mean, my dad would tell me a story when he was a kid. He said he was walking down the road with these tennis shoes, and the soles were falling apart, and Mrs. Furukawa had the store, and she gave him new shoes. And he was so proud, he said, "Oh, look at this." He goes, "All kawa." Kawa is leather. And apparently they couldn't afford leather shoes back then. And he and his brother were so proud to get those new shoes, they were all leather. But we had marbles and we had... we really didn't think that we were having it too hard. We went to a public school and I have a lot of tribal friends, and lot of Hispanic friends, a lot of Caucasian friends. This isn't an urban area or anything like that, so everybody in the rural areas didn't have a lot. And so I guess I never really felt that I was too underprivileged.

<Begin Segment 17>

TI: Well, by the time you came along, your parents had purchased land.

LI: Right.

TI: And that was in terms of the Inaba family, this multigeneration, the first time someone in the family had purchased the land.

LI: Oh, yeah. And if it wasn't for my mom's ten thousand dollars that she had saved up, they probably couldn't have done that. But that really helped. But then shortly after they purchased land, they started popping out kids.

TI: But your father still farmed.

LI: Oh, yeah.

TI: And I'm guessing helped your parents.

LI: My grandparents, yeah.

TI: Your grandparents, your grandparents.

LI: And George was still around. And I think early in the game, some of the other siblings were still going to college.

TI: So about the time that you were born and your parents were having children, they owned a plot of land, I think 40 acres, and your grandparents were leasing...

LI: The 80.

TI: Eighty acres. So that's 120 acres of land.

LI: Yeah. And that was about all they had for a long time. My grandfather actually died in '65 or something like that. Probably could look that up. He died of a stroke. So my dad pretty much watched over my grandmother and my uncle George. My uncle George was, I guess, we would call him developmentally disabled. And so he was kind of slow, but he walked all over the place and he loved talking to people. All the animals loved him, I guess they could sense his kindness. And so he would always bring home cats or bring home extra dogs on his walks through the valley.

TI: But it was your father. So after your grandfather died in the '60s, he took over the farming of not only his 40 acres, but the other 80.

LI: Oh yeah, because he was farming prior to getting married. He was farming that 80 prior to that.

TI: And so probably, how did you, just talking about you, how did you help your father? 120 acres is quite a bit.

LI: Yeah. We had a tractor. By then, we had several tractors, you know. And as we grew up, we just did what we could. And my dad was a very hard worker, and when he was loading tomato boxes, he would set me on the seat of the tractor when I was six years old. And he just said, "Just go straight." So I would sit on that tractor and I would just do it straight. And if something happened, there was no way I could have stopped the tractor.

TI: You couldn't reach the pedals.

LI: Yeah, I couldn't reach the pedals, you know. And I don't think my legs were strong enough to do that. But yeah, I was driving that old tractor since the time I was six years old.

TI: Well, you talked about even at that age working in the fields, too.

LI: Yeah. I mean, we did everything. And we learned how to pull weeds and hoe and plant things, because we were the farm workers. And in my dad's generation, all those children were the farm workers. And so when we were fortunate enough to have the ability to hire farm workers, we had a lot of respect. And it wasn't like we were anything above them, my dad worked right alongside those guys. And my memory, as a young man, was we would be, my brother Wayne and I would be helping 'em whenever we can. But my brother Norman was a little smaller than everybody, and his job was to bring beer to my dad and the farm workers. And so at ten o'clock and three o'clock my dad would sit down on these buckets and have beer with his workers.

TI: You said at ten o'clock and three?

LI: At three o'clock, yeah. And I think Norman kind of liked beer, and so on one of the trips back, somebody didn't drink the beer, so Norman did. And when we came back, we found him asleep on the couch. [Laughs] But yeah, it was not bad times. We had a lot of good friends, and we had a lot of time to spend with my grandmother.

<Begin Segment 18>

TI: And as you were growing up, how much did you hear or know about the family history? I mean, now you could talk about your great-grandfather, your grandparents, your parents, the World War II experience. When you were going through, like, middle school and high school, how much did you know about what happened to Japanese and Japanese Americans in the valley?

LI: Well, very little. But I did know that they were evacuated, and I did know that they lost a lot of opportunities, they lost a lot of their wealth because of the fact that they were Japanese. And when my grandfather, I guess, when they could finally become naturalized citizens, my grandfather said, "What for?" He said, "I already lost everything I had three times." [Laughs] So, "This late in my life, why do I want to be a citizen now?" He wanted to be a citizen way back when, but they wouldn't let him. And so at that time he was not interested in becoming a citizen after everything that happened to him.

TI: So he decided never to become a U.S. citizen?

LI: He never became naturalized.

TI: And how about your grandmother?

LI: I think my grandmother did, yes, she did. But she's quite a bit younger, she was eighteen years younger. And so I believe she was naturalized.

TI: Growing up, how much did you know in terms of things like the relationship of your family with the tribes? The stories of some of the white businesspeople who helped your father and grandfather, things like that, how much did you know about those things?

LI: Well, I remember the Wilbur Logan story helping the family out, because they were extremely grateful. And Esther Boyd and Dan McDonald, I heard that through other people. They didn't directly help our particular family, but they were very helpful to the entire Japanese community. And so people... my dad made sure to let me know, "Don't forget these people."

TI: Yeah, you talked about before the war, there were over a thousand Japanese and Japanese Americans in Yakima, in the valley. And then after the war you said maybe ten percent came back.

LI: Right.

TI: And so when you went to school, and you talked about how some of the classrooms was a quarter Japanese. When you went to school, how many other Japanese Americans were there?

LI: I don't know. Maybe, at very most, maybe five percent, but probably less than five percent.

TI: So about one in twenty, so maybe a couple in that class, one or two in that class.

LI: Yeah, exactly. I went to Harrah Elementary School for eight years, and then I went from there to Wapato because that's where my dad graduated. But I went to school with a lot of the tribal members out here in the valley, there were more tribal people that went to school with me than anybody else. And so I had tribal friends, I had Hispanic friends, I had Caucasian friends. And so I didn't think I was anything special, but I didn't think I was below them either.

TI: So how in terms of earlier you said before the war, in terms of relationships, you said it was kind of like a hierarchy. It was, you had the white population, and then all the other nationalities and groups, for instance, were kind of all the same below that, this kind of hierarchy. What was it like during your time? Was there a similar hierarchy? Because you talk about having all these friends in different areas.

LI: Well, I don't know. I guess I didn't feel that much different during my time. Because I think the Filipino people came after the Japanese, and so some of the Filipino people worked for the Japanese farms, and some of them actually took over the Japanese farms when the Japanese were evacuated. But, you know, I guess we have a bunch of different colors out there, but I didn't really feel that I was any better than anybody, or like I said, I was below anybody else. I guess I kind of felt that everybody had some tough times. We didn't have the fancy toys that some of the other folks did with their larger farms. We didn't have snowmobiles or fancy hot cars or anything like that. There were certain families that did have money, and it was obvious. But there was a lot of other people just like us that really didn't have a heck of a lot. And we got along.

<Begin Segment 19>

TI: So we're essentially the same age. So guessing you graduated around high school, from, like, '74 around there?

LI: Yeah, exactly.

TI: And then you went to college, and you're '78?

LI: I graduated in '79, yeah.

TI: I graduated in '79, too. So in thinking... we were talking about when your grandfather died in the '60s, and 120 acres, your dad is doing much of the farming. From that time period, mid-'60s to mid to late '70s, what was going on with the farm? What changes or what was happening?

LI: Well, because I think my dad's siblings were going away, he was kind of cutting out some of the different crops. So farming with my grandfather prior to the war and slightly after the war, they had a more diversified crop mix. But because he was farming more on his own, he kind of cut the variety down to a point where we were only doing bell peppers and sweet corn and concord grapes. And in the meantime, in the '60s, he had two heart attacks. And so that was slightly after he built this house. The mid-'60s, that was when my sister Terri was born. And so he worked his butt off, and I think too much. And he came in and sat in his chair one day and said, "It's like an elephant sitting on my chest." And so we called an ambulance, ran him to the hospital. And for a period of time, he wasn't sure if he wanted to continue farming. But a good family friend, George Hirahara, had retired from farming and he actually ran our farm. I think I was probably thirteen years old, twelve, thirteen years old, my brother Wayne's a little bit younger. But he pretty much farmed, he ran the farm. And for a while we grew mint, because mint was less labor intensive. And so George was very good, he was a good family friend.

TI: Now, is this the George Hirahara that did a lot of photography?

LI: Yes. And his son was Frank, and his granddaughter is Patti. Yeah, so they were good family friends.

TI: Okay. So I know the photo collection, I've seen it from Patti, so when you mentioned that name...

LI: He farmed for about three or four years with my dad. And he got him into the mint business and so for a while we were growing mint.

TI: And is this pretty much the same 120 acres that your...

LI: Yeah, they might have picked up another... I think they got up to, like, 200 acres or something like that.

<Begin Segment 20>

TI: Well, as you are going through high school and thinking about college and stuff, was there any pressure on you or anyone else, of the Sanseis to run the farm?

LI: No. My dad always, he wanted, education is really important. So my mom and my dad, they wanted us to go to school. So at one time, my dad had four kids going to WSU at the same time, and pretty tough. And so I got a job as an apartment manager, and so we had a free apartment for me and my two brothers. And so I think that helped a lot.

TI: Oh, so, apartment manager here?

LI: At WSU.

TI: At WSU, yeah. And we should... my Yonsei kids would say this: "But, Dad, tuition back then was, at UW, 188 dollars a quarter." So it was kind of the time where we could work part-time and actually... it was probably like you, I mean, I paid for my way through school with part-time work. It was a very different time.

LI: Yeah. But, you know, my parents helped us out. I learned how to drink beer at WSU.

TI: Well, I guess that's... you went to WSU. Because I was in Seattle at UW, so I stayed at home, so I didn't have to...

LI: Yeah. And so growing up on the farm, all we did was work. When we came back from school, we just changed our clothes and went to work. And so I guess I look at the best years of my life were those first two years at WSU, probably not a very good educational year for me academically. But I learned a lot about life during those first two years, and I went from a biology major to become an ag engineering major.

TI: So you chose agricultural engineering thinking you would maybe go into farming?

LI: No. I knew how much work farming was, and so I thought I want to figure out how to make farming easier. And so I was thinking, oh, my ideal dream job was to work for FMC because I remember the food machinery company, their name was on a lot of equipment that I saw in these packing houses and on equipment that, you know, corn harvesters or packing line equipment, things like that. So I kind of thought, oh, I think I want to design that and build that. So that's why I did it. The reason I switched from biology was because I had an uncle who had his master's degree, and he said, "How long do you want to go to school?" I go, "Well, I want to graduate." He goes, "Well, you've got to do that if you're a biology major," he goes, "I got my master's degree and I'm just a technician." He goes, "Your uncle has his PhD and he's working on cancer research," or something like that, and he goes, "but he had to go another x-many years. You want to go to school that long?" and I go, "No." [Laughs] So I started flipping through the catalog and I came up with ag engineering. And I really enjoyed the program.

TI: And so after you graduated from Washington State University in 1979, agricultural engineering, what did you do after that?

LI: I was recruited by these guys at the Hanford nuclear reservation, Battelle, Pacific Northwest Labs, and the section I got recruited in was the food and agriculture section. So they were an odd duck on the Hanford nuclear reservation.

TI: Yeah, I was actually going to say, I mean, on the Hanford nuclear site, so nuclear research, you have the nuclear waste there, you have all sorts of... but around nuclear power.

LI: Right. But it was during the Jimmy Carter years, and so I did some rotations and I got exposed to active and passive solar. I got exposed to some of these alternative energy kind of things in the food and agriculture section, I actually did some paper research on the harvest, collection, and storage of agriculture and agricultural and forest residues. Because they were looking at, that was the energy shortage, energy crisis, we're going to run out of oil. And so they were looking at agriculture and forest wastes to be an energy source as well as solar and anaerobic digestion, direct combustion. And so, yeah, I was doing that, I was doing paper studies, kind of like eighth grade book reports, I would read all these reports and kind of digest them and make one combination like an eighth grade book report. And that was, Shirley Geydesson from the Hanford Technical Library told me that, at one time, my report was the most popular report out of the technical library. Because it was like an eighth grade book report, and it was something that politicians can read and digest and actually get a good idea of what was available for doing things like that. And so those were the Jimmy Carter years. So there was money and there was a lot of emphasis on alternative energy. So it was fun.

<Begin Segment 21>

TI: Yeah, so late '70s, the 1980s, that's when Reagan was, some things were changing. So you're living down in the Tri-Cities, Hanford, down there. This is now early '80s, you're down there. Then what happens?

LI: Well, in those early '80s, my dad was selling to two different people, and one of the guys didn't pay him for half his crop, filed for bankruptcy. And so my dad decided that, you know, the only way I'm going to keep farming is if I become a grower-packer-shipper. And so we were growing and packing, but we didn't have a cold room, we didn't have cooling facilities. And so my brother Wayne left WSU a week before graduation to help my dad out. And I go, "Boy, what did you do that for?" He goes, "Well, you already have a job."

TI: Yeah, stop there... so your brother Wayne, he's getting a business or accounting...

LI: Accounting degree.

TI: Accounting degree. And you're saying one week before he would graduate, he left? I mean, was he on track to graduate if he'd literally stayed one more week?

LI: Oh, yeah. He was planning, prior to him coming home, he actually, in our apartment complex, he always had the study guide for the LSAT on the coffee table.

TI: So he was thinking of going to law school after business school? So what this says to me was, this was some kind of crisis, this was something big. It wasn't like he could wait another couple weeks for him to finish school.

LI: Well, he didn't want to finish school, I don't believe, because otherwise it would be harder for him to come back to the farm.

TI: So explain that. Why would having an accounting degree make it more difficult to come back to the farm?

LI: I don't know what was going through his head, but he worked so hard to do that. I think it was just easier to come home before graduation than after graduation.

TI: Is it almost like with an accounting degree, he knew there would be job opportunities?

LI: Outside of the farm.

TI: Outside of the farm. And maybe that your parents would make him take those jobs rather than come back to the farm?

LI: He kind of wrote me off because I already had a job. I said, "Well, why did you come back?" He goes, "Well, you already got a job," and Norman and Diane, they're still going to school. And so he goes, "Somebody has to help."

TI: And he said, "Mom and Dad need help because this packer/shipper kind of screwed the family and didn't pay."

LI: Right.

TI: So, "Dad's going to want to expand and he's going to need help doing that."

LI: Yeah. And my dad was the grower, so my brother Wayne said, "I'll be the sales guy." And so he served as the sales guy and the accountant.

TI: Well, so wait a minute. So you have the grower, then you have the sales guy, but you still need the packer/shipper.

LI: Well, yeah. They were kind of packing, and so that was kind of where I fit in, because I thought, "Well, I'll help you guys with the, building a hydrocooler." And shortly after I came home and built a hydrocooler, we needed to build this water jet transplanter. Shortly after that, the greenhouses burned to the ground and so I went from making twenty-five thousand dollars a year at Battelle, which I thought was the most money I'd ever made in my whole life, and getting done at three o'clock, to coming home to the farm. And I think I was putting in eight, maybe nine hours a day in at Battelle, but on the farm we were working fourteen, sixteen hour days for six thousand dollars a year. [Laughs] But we lived at home and Mom cooked for us, and Mom's a great cook, and we weren't married or anything like that. So yeah, but we built a business and we realized that we just took out the biggest loan we ever had in our whole life to build the cold room and the hydrocoolers. And so once the greenhouses burned down, we had to build those, too. But it was kind of a new chapter and we persevered.

TI: So this is really, literally "bet the farm" kind of, for the family. And you kind of walked through it matter-of-factly, but here, so I'm in your dad's shoes right now, and I'm thinking, okay, so my two oldest sons, you're a college graduate, you're working at one of the premier research jobs in the country, Battelle and Hanford. My other son, who's a week before graduating with an accounting degree, wants to go to law school, he's going to quit. Both of these sons, who had incredible potential and options to do other things, in some ways, things I sacrificed so much so that they could have, they're coming home. And we're going to take out this huge loan and we could fall flat on our face. It's a pretty... I mean, your dad's perspective, it's a pretty big thing. I'm guessing, just based on what I've heard, he wasn't totally comfortable that you guys did what you did.

LI: Well, he still had three other children in college. Well, two in college still and one coming up ready to graduate.

TI: Yeah, but I would have said, "So, Lon, keep your job, and if things go bad at the farm, you have to help the others," right? I mean, that's another way of thinking that would diversify the risk.

LI: Yeah, he could have said that, but he didn't. And I think he was happy to have us. He didn't force us to do it, he didn't ask us to do it. And I'm pretty sure he was flattered to have us back.

TI: Well, what about from your perspective then? What were you thinking? You're giving up a very promising career, and you mentioned, again, you're modest. You wrote a report that was highly regarded, people are interested, you're probably getting noticed. How did you feel about giving that up to come back to a very intense fourteen-hour-a-week farming, something that you weren't really planning to do?

LI: Yeah, but I mean, I probably did more engineering in the first three weeks back home on the farm than I did for three years at Battelle. Actual engineering, building things that I kind of wanted to do. And so when it came to doing this greenhouse project, there was kind of an opportunity for me. So I don't know, I didn't really regret it until I was at the YMCA one day and I heard this guy had just retired from Battelle Memorial Institute. And I went to the guy and said, "Hey, Vic, it's been kind of bothering me, but is it really true that after five years you're twenty-five percent vested, and after ten years you're fifty percent vested, and after twenty years you're a hundred percent vested in your retirement plan?" Which meant that at age sixty-five, you get a hundred percent of your top three years?

TI: Well, actually, probably for you, if you started when you're in your early twenties, at forty-five you would been fully vested.

LI: No, but at age sixty-five was their plan, but they said at a hundred percent of your top three years is what they would pay at age sixty-five. And the guy goes, "Yep, it's what I'm making." He goes, "I've already got a military retirement and I've got social security, and I've got a hundred percent of my top three years," he goes, "I can't spend that much money." But that was the first time that I actually realized what we walked away from. But it really didn't bother me that much because we helped our family and we expanded the farm. And like I said, we're getting recognition in doing other things. We built housing that was recognized. I was being asked to be on different boards. I had a lot of opportunities that I probably wouldn't have had if I'd stayed at Battelle. I might have had different opportunities, but it's kind of like, well, it's sometimes better to be a big fish in a little pond than a little fish in a big pond. Yeah, so I think as far as recognition, I probably got more recognition at the farm than I would have at Battelle. Yeah, because the rest of the people that I was working with had their PhDs and they were talking about, they wrote books, chapters on how the earth was formed. And they were doing all these fancy-ass things, and I probably, I just had my bachelor's degree. When I look back, I'm going, I don't think I really walked away from anything. But I just ended up having to put a lot more hours in. But I think we had an opportunity to do a lot more for our communities, for our families.

<Begin Segment 22>

TI: So let's kind of walk through when you made the decision, you and your brother, to come back and help your dad, to go from essentially a grower operation to a grower-packer and the shipping, kind of selling, more vertically integrated. So it started off, did you guys have a master plan? Did you kind of know what you wanted to do? I mean, it felt like, yeah, what were you thinking?

LI: Well, the one thing that we did know is that you're going to get another cut. Not only did we have the growers' cut, but we had the shippers' cut. And if we could keep our costs down on the shipping end of things, there's a pretty good margin there. And my dad was a good grower, my brother Wayne was a good salesman. And I liked to build things, and we were building things that were going to cost double or triple, but we, what would have had to pay if we didn't build it ourselves. And so we were building a good team. It's just not our family, but we had Hispanic workers, people who have been with our farm ever since I got back to the farm. And they're just like my brothers and my sisters. And working with those guys, I mean, I had my engineering skills. And so I could lay it out, but I have some very talented welders and tractor drivers and just very discriminating workers that were excellent.

TI: So at the beginning when you came back from Battelle and you started doing the hydrocoolers, about how many farm crops, how many acres were you guys farming at that time?

LI: I think we started with, like, two hundred acres.

TI: Okay, two hundred acres. Because at some point you started as the engineer in terms of the hydrocooler, you had to start scaling. Like how large should this be and how much we can cool. And so early on, did you start thinking, oh, we're going to build and have the capacity to be bigger, is that what you guys were thinking?

LI: Well, I always thought that whatever we do, we always have to add, make it so that you have the capacity to add on without having to go backwards. Because we had to work so hard to get to where we were, I didn't want to throw anything away. So I always want to make sure we're creating and not have to just walk away from it and start over. And so that's why now we have a building that's attached to another building. And as we grew, we would add another 20-foot to a 30-foot wide building. And we did it, we tried to do it because have this, what we thought was this huge loan for building the cold rooms and the hydrocoolers, we'd try to do everything outside of cash. And so by having that one step up on the chain of distribution there, there were a lot of opportunities to make money. And so we would buy property with cash, we would build buildings with cash, and I would get the permit on the minimum building for the design, to get the permit in the rough. And then we would put all the walls and insulation and the electrical wiring. And if we're going to put any other infrastructure in, we'd do that out of -- and we would expense that -- we would do that with our workers. What that allowed us to do was keep our good workers employed. And so we'd do the farming during the main season, and in the offseason, we would build. We built it. We built our farmworker housing. We built, we poured concrete, we built equipment. And we did all those things, and it allowed us to keep busy and we could cut the cost of having to purchase that from somebody else.

TI: So it seemed like the business model, so when you decided to more vertically integrate, and you were able to, in particular, do the hydrocooler and the cold room and all that, that gave you a competitive advantage.

<Begin Segment 23>

TI: So going back, so back in the early '80s, it seems like you created a competitive advantage and actually created somewhat of a cash cow that would generate more cash than you actually needed to service the debt and just do it. And then you plowed that money back into the business and kind of grew on a cash basis, that probably was healthy in terms of a growth model, and just did that over the years. And not only in terms of the infrastructure, the buildings and stuff like that, but also the land that you started farming, because you started with two hundred. We were going around, I think you were saying it's close to 1,500 acres now?

LI: But five hundred is what we owned and a thousand is what we leased.

TI: But even then, back then, when you had two hundred acres, probably, what, forty owned, the rest leased?

LI: Right.

TI: So you went from forty acres owned to five hundred acres? Over ten times that, and the leased land, again, like a tenfold...

LI: And the beauty was, again, when we finally sold to the tribe, we really didn't owe any money to anybody.

TI: Right, yeah.

LI: And that's kind of unusual in agriculture, most people carry a pretty big debt load. Almost any business, many of these businesses have a pretty high debt load.

TI: And so before we go to the sale to the tribe, I'm guessing there was probably a consideration or thinking already you're a three-generation, I guess, maybe four generation, your great-grandfather?

LI: Right.

TI: Probably the thought was, is there another generation left in the Inaba family to continue the farm? And what was the thinking there? Was it a sense that the next generation, so we're Sansei, so there was no one in that Yonsei generation to carry on?

LI: Well, my son was there, but in these past recent years, there's lots of regulation and there's lots of red tape. And all these laws are coming in, and I thought, man, my son couldn't do this by himself. And I'm not sure if it's going to be wise to ask him to, you know. And so we really didn't encourage him to think about the farm, because he didn't act like he liked the farm that much, anyhow. [Laughs] And he was more, one of the privileged kids. He got to go to a private school, and he had a lot of toys that other kids maybe didn't have. And he didn't like to work the kind of hours that we were working. And so I don't know, I just kind of thought, man, I don't know if I really want to do this to him. Because it's not easy and agriculture's getting tougher and tougher. And with all the things, the treatment they were getting from the big chains, they weren't so loyal to you anymore. And the Mexican produce and South American produce was starting to kill us. And it's kind of like, well, I don't want set him up for failure either.

TI: So that makes sense.

<Begin Segment 24>

TI: So at that point, knowing that you're in your late sixties and Wayne also is kind of getting up there, in terms of the sale of the farm, you have options. And this is incredibly valuable farmland. The Yakima Valley is, for Washington state, one of the bread baskets in terms of agriculture. What were your options? Were there businesses or corporations that were interested?

LI: Well, some of the people that we were selling to wanted to, if we wanted to sell, they wanted to buy. Some of the California farmers were talking to us, some of the multinational guys were talking to us. But everybody that we were talking to kind of wanted us to hang around and run it for them. And I said, "Guys, I'm already your slave, I really don't want to be your slave forever." And in the meantime, we were giving away a million and a half pounds of off-grade produce to Northwest Harvest. And what started out a bin here, a bin there, but then pretty soon that was building up, and they were just taking off-grade off of the end of our sorting line. And then they would have all these volunteers, and then they would go different areas, Spokane, Kent and Yakima. And people from Microsoft would volunteer to sort these things out, and then they would distribute them. And so we became a pretty significant donor to Northwest Harvest. Then the COVID thing hit, and Tom Reynolds came to me and said, "You don't have any volunteers. We can't sort your off-grade produce, but we need food more than we ever did." And he said, "We need six different items in a fifteen to eighteen pound box. And we have no volunteers to do that, but we do have money to pay you. And since we have this relationship, we're coming to you guys first." And he said, "What can you guys handle?" I said, "How about if we started out with five hundred boxes a day, twenty-five hundred boxes a week, and we'll see how that goes." By the third week we were shipping two thousand boxes a day, ten thousand boxes a week, and I think we were one of the major suppliers for Northwest Harvest, and at the time, because of the relationship that we had with Northwest Harvest, they were actually shipping a lot of our waste produce that they were sorting out to other entities, too, and so they had this capacity. So instead of supplying, there was, I think Food Lifeline and Second Harvest were the three entities that were shipping food out. And so Northwest Harvest had the relationship with us, and so I think they were shipping produce throughout the state.

TI: So that's interesting. So it started off as, in some ways, you were just being very generous. I mean, it probably was extra work, but you wanted to make sure this food was used and so you donated it to Northwest Harvest, created this relationship. And in the midst of COVID, probably when it was probably a difficult business climate for you as well as others, it actually came back and was very beneficial.

LI: Yeah. And it was, and at the same time, we had just sold the parcel to the school, and it was a pretty good sale to the school district right prior to COVID, to the school district. And so we were thinking maybe this was a good time to kind of work our way out of the business. And I was at a meeting and the tribe gave a presentation on this ag development project. And they had 3,500 acres on the hill that they wanted to develop, and the government was going to help them develop this irrigation project. And they said, "We want to be more than just landlords, we want to teach our people how to feed themselves and learn to farm." And Brady Kent was the one who gave the presentation and he said, "The first thing we're looking for is a small packing house and cold storage facility." And so after the meeting, I was the chairman of the board that he was giving the presentation to. I didn't really say anything at the meeting, but I came to him after the meeting and said, "Hey, Brady, I got a small packing house and cold storage facility, and I'm sixty-five years old." I said, "Is that something you're looking for?" Boom. Then all of a sudden I had all these calls from these tribal leaders that, "Are you really wanting to sell?" blah, blah, blah. And I thought we would probably just liquidate the equipment and sell to my hop grower buddies because I'm surrounded by five different hop growing families in probably the best place to grow hops in the world. And I thought, well, that's what I do. But this thing came along and I thought, wow. And as I talked to the tribes, I learned that food sovereignty was a pretty important issue with all the tribes, and they wanted to learn. And I thought, wow, we have a pretty diversified operation, I think. We have a lot to offer. Plus, I said, we could make hundred tons of ice a day, and we could supply that ice to tribal fishermen. And so I thought, wow, that's one way to kind of counteract the decline in the fresh produce business because of the competition from Mexico. And I said, wow, that's a pretty good fit. So I've always looked for mutually beneficial relationships, and I thought, wow, this is a pretty good one. And if we could tie it with Northwest Harvest, I think it could be really a good one. And so we pursued it. It took three years, abut eventually we sold to the tribe.

TI: Yeah, this makes so much sense. I mean, spending the whole day with you and talking about your crop mix and then this idea of food sovereignty... you're right, food sovereignty isn't buying food from Mexico. I mean, it's really their land, farming it, and packing it and using it. And for the excess, working with things like Northwest Harvest to expand upon it. I mean, from their perspective, it's such an opportunity that they can do beyond just their tribe. So yeah, it was really helpful just spending all that time walking through or looking at all operations. Because the business side of me scratches the head a little bit and says, "Yeah, but you can make more money if you were more focused on fewer crops and more volume."

LI: Yeah, and you specialize in one or two crops, and it would be much easier to do. But because of the Northwest Harvest deal, because of the food sovereignty deal, it really worked to our advantage to have a diversified operation. And so, yeah, they were a really good fit. And because of that fit, I was willing to pursue that, because of the relationship with the tribes, the tribal community, I figured, it's a way to pay 'em back.

<Begin Segment 25>

TI: So what was the reaction of other family members? Because it's not just you, there was other family members. And as much as it fits, there probably was a case where you could sell the operations and stuff in different ways that would actually make more money. So what was the reaction of the family in terms of, in some ways, getting...

LI: Well, I kind of think my, maybe brothers and sisters really kind of thought it was maybe not so realistic. Because I've got that attitude on some other ventures that I've done. [Laughs] "He's not being practical." But my mom said, "If we sell to anybody, I think I'd like to sell to the tribe." And so that kind of kept me on tack to pursue this. And the more we talked, the better fit it seemed. And other communities, other tribal communities also had these food sovereignty concerns. You know, so hey, if we can not only benefit the Yakama tribal community as well as other tribal communities within the state, that's pretty cool.

TI: No, I agree. And you know and I know, I mean, the sale has gotten quite a bit of publicity. It came to my attention, New York Times did a feature article, there were other articles and so I think it's probably hit TV and all of that. I mean, so it sounds like the response to the sale has been pretty positive.

LI: Yeah. And I think people want to support it. Even the chain stores want to support it, because it looks good. It looks good, and people want to do some of these things. I mean, those are becoming more important to people now. Not just the money thing, but doing things for the right reasons.

TI: So what has surprised you with this decision? You probably said, yeah, it makes sense, it makes sense for the family, it makes sense for you and Wayne at this point. From what you've heard, it makes sense for the tribe. And so all of that was probably somewhat expected. What were some of the things that surprised you? Anything unexpected that has happened?

LI: It's taking a long time. It's taking a long time, and the transition is taking a long time. And I just have to... I'm not a tribal member, I don't realize what's going on in the tribal community. And so people don't always understand what's going on, but I think I've been very well-received with a lot of folks. And I'm taking the opportunity, we're building a greenhouse for the tribal school, we're working on these native healing gardens at the tribal jail. And I mean, I guess I didn't really expect all the publicity we were going to get. But it's kind of cool. It's kind of cool, and the cool part is that the tribal leaders are seeing that, and it really makes them feel proud, too.

<Begin Segment 26>

TI: So we're kind of coming to the end of this interview and I'm kind of doing more, almost like reflections and thoughts about the Japanese community in the Yakima Valley and what's going to happen in the future. Your family from your great-grandfather has been very involved in the community. What do you see for the future? First with, say, the Inaba family had now five generations, at least five generations in the valley. I mean, with the farm being sold, how do you think that's going to impact the Inaba family in Yakima?

LI: Well, it's a good question. But you know, just like all of agriculture, the children in those farming families are leaving to do other things. I have two nieces, one's going to be a doctor, the other one is working for the state. My son actually has decided to come back to the farm, and so he's our marketing guy, he's learning marketing. But the one good thing is he doesn't have to do everything like what we're doing, and there's going to be a lot bigger staff, and there's going to be more structure to that. And so I'm hoping maybe someday the tribe will want to adopt me or something like that. [Laughs] But I guess I'm old enough to be considered an elder, so I don't plan to go anywhere. I just want to start playing around in my shop and maybe spend a little bit more time on vacation.

TI: And kind of a similar question for just the Japanese American community. I know you've been involved in setting up some kind of, like, more permanent structures. I mean, tomorrow we're going to go out to the cemetery, and I know there's some things out there. I've looked at pictures of things like the Buddhist Temple, I know there are other memorials. So there will always be, kind of, I think the Japanese, the Japanese American story around. But in terms of the community, what do you see like in twenty, thirty, fifty years?

LI: I think they're going to blend with everybody else. My wife is of Swedish descent, my son is Korean, my niece is getting married to a Ukrainian. You know, that's just the way the world works, I think. And ethnic purity is probably not that important anymore. I don't know, I think that it's a healthy system.

TI: So, Lon, I've reached the end of my questions. Is there anything else, Kimi or Yuka, that you'd like to ask? And while they're thinking, Lon, is there anything else that you want to add or say?

LI: Well, when you look back on those Issei pioneers, my uncle George passed away a few years ago, and my dad's brother George. And when we put the headstone for my dad's brother George, we thought, "Let's put up the headstone for my grandmother's brother, Uncle George." Because his headstone was in (the old section of) Tahoma (cemetery) and was kicked over, and the only thing left was a little square of concrete, temporary marker that said "Norikawa," it was even spelled wrong. And we would put flowers on that grave for many years, just because we thought that's my great uncle George. But when we looked up when he was born and when he died, we found he was born in 1911, he died in 1913, and his name was George Washington Morikawa. [Laughs] And when you think back on that, you say wow, they really wanted to integrate into the American society. And it's tough, but I think that's common with a lot of immigrants to the area. It's not like they were so loyal to their mother country. They came to America to make a new life, I think. And so I think with that in mind, you kind of go, wow. I think that's what the Japanese immigration was all about.

TI: And I think that's very much the power of these stories, and asking about them, preserving them, so that they do become part of their story.

LI: Cool.

TI: Well, thank you so much.