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CE: One of the first things that I discovered that I was going to be here, I was going to have a congregation in Hood River also, and that's a whole story in itself. The Methodist church had what it called the Japanese Provisional Conference which was not a geographical conference over the states. It was a U.S. total nation. And it was the governing body, the overseeing body for the Japanese churches, most of which were on the West Coast, but the appointments were made through that. So when the people came back from the camps in Hood River, they were depending upon the Japanese Provisional Conference for a minister. It was not long after... well, I'm not sure how long after they, suffering through that discrimination that they decided that their church, which incidentally was started by the Portland church in 1926, I think, and the Salem church was started in 1925. If I need to look I will, but that's pretty close. And they decided that in order to overcome that kind of discrimination, they needed to integrate into the Caucasian church, and they could do that except for the Issei who needed a language ministry. So the Nisei and everyone lower than, younger than Issei went to the local Methodist church in Hood River or to a church of their choosing. They didn't have to go to the Methodist church. There was a congregation made up of Issei only that began to be ministered to from the Japanese Provisional Conference. That was a difficult thing to do because the Japanese Provisional Conference was so widespread. They had for a while somebody coming from Tacoma to hold a service for them and so forth. But when the Japanese Provisional Conference was discontinued in 1964, Epworth was asked to be responsible for that Hood River Issei congregation. And the pattern was sort of established that on the first Sunday of the month, they would have a worship service in the sanctuary of the Asbury United Methodist Church in Hood River, and that the minister from Epworth would go and take care of that worship service. On a Wednesday in the middle of the month, as the Wednesdays fell, they would choose which one, they would have a bible study and meet in somebody's home to do that. But there was still quite a group. It may be that early on, they met in the church on Wednesday for that bible study also in a room. I think that's right. But at any rate, I suddenly had this responsibility, so I had to take my translator with me. And at the beginning, we would go to the church on Sunday, and I couldn't do anything language wise, but I would play the piano, and we had quite a group of thirty, thirty-five people. And we'd meet in the church sanctuary and holding a full worship service. And then what I did was I asked my translator -- because these fellows were religious college students doing Christian studies -- if they could work up a bible study and do that middle of the month Wednesday bible study. And I didn't go to that, then they began to do that. And so all of the translators that I had did that ministry in Hood River which was, I think, a very significant thing, very wonderful.

Of course, time passed and we kept losing people. The time came when we decided that we were a small enough group. We needed to meet in the homes, and so we moved around to different homes. And then the group got small enough that we met at Mr. Tomita's only, Mr. Tomita's house. Everybody called him Bishop Tomita. It was a wonderful designation for him because he was such a, he was just naturally a person in charge. Didn't try to be, he didn't try to have power; he was naturally the person in charge, and we met in his house until we were down to one person. It's hard to hold a group meeting with one person. So 1988, we discontinued that ministry at the annual gathering of the Methodist conference in Salem and did a whole discontinuing of that with message and with history and with singing. And by the time we got to that, the bishop could hardly get through his prayer, he was so choked up. But it was a marvelous experience, and I'll do some more commenting on that later.

BB: So for a full ten years of your ministry here, you were also engaged --

CE: In Hood River.

BB: In the Hood River ministry.

CE: Because that was a part of the appointment to this church, and that was a surprise. There was lots of surprises in the beginning when I discovered what I was going to be doing, and I just kept remembering the district superintendent's words: "Find a way to do it." [Laughs]

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.