Two-Thirds of Prewar Nisei Here Are Back

Two thirds of the 7,000 Japanese-Americans evacuated from the Seattle area in 1942 have returned since the end of the Second World War, the War Agency Liquidation Unit reported yesterday.

The 67 per cent return of Seattle Japanese was more than the West Coast average of 60 per cent.

However, Washington, Oregon and California today have only 55 per cent of the nation's Japanese-American population, compared with 88.5 per cent before the war. The three states had 112,353 of the country's 126,947 Japanese-Americans in 1940.

Kent Has Fervor

The report said many residents of the Kent-Auburn area, described as "a strong center of agitation against Japanese-Americans," remained in Eastern Oregon and Western Idaho.

A report was made by Robert K. Candlin, chief of the War Agency Liquidation Unit, the Associated Press reported from Washington, D.C.

Candlin described resettlement in other Pacific Northwest areas as follows:

Eastern Washington -- Farm holdings in Spokane area have increased 60 per cent since 1941. Japanese-American farmers control more than 90 per cent of local vegetable produce market.

Hood River, Or., -- This was once a hotbed of anti-Japanese sentiment, but most Japanese-American farm owners are making good adjustments. Young Nisei hold office jobs and other work from which they were barred before the war.

Eastern Oregon-Western Idaho -- Of a wartime peak of 2,000 Japanese-Americans, 1,500 remain along the Snake River and in the Boise Valley.

The report predicted West Coast commerce will receive "serious competition" from the returned Japanese-Americans. This competition, it said, will not result from a low standard of living, but from modern techniques.

The report said the Japanese-Americans will not revert to their prewar status in West Coast agriculture, pointing out that the Nisei (American-born) now must carry the agricultural burden of their race, because their parents are too old.