Densho Digital Archive
Oregon Nikkei Endowment Collection
Title: Jim Tsujimura Interview
Narrator: Jim Tsujimura
Interviewer: Margaret Barton Ross
Location: Portland, Oregon
Date: July 24, 2003
Densho ID: denshovh-tjim_2-01-0015

<Begin Segment 15>

MR: And then there was a building donation that you were involved in too which is quite interesting. Could you explain that?

JT: I don't know which one --

MR: Oh, the house, the Meiji Era.

JT: Oh, Meiji Mura. When I was asked to visit Japan in '81, the first person that approached me was a director from Meiji Mura. Meiji being a certain period, 1868 to 1912. They had an open air museum, beautiful, with so many, oh, it was a huge place. But he approached me and asked me if I could, after I came back, search for a building, a house, anything that had to do with Japanese or Japanese influence. However, it had to be donated to the museum and, of course, had some influence, Japanese influence. Well, after a year of seeking such a building, we did find one in Seattle. Ken Nakano, very active in JACL also, he and I were co-chair of the district U.S./Japan relations as well as the atomic bomb survivors, and he was a survivor himself. Well we found a place. A house, which was a family house, turned over as a Japanese Evangelical church. And because of attrition it had died out, vacant, and so the owner agreed to donate the building. Well, the director and an engineer came from Japan to look at the house, studied it. They approved it. So they took it apart piece by piece, shipped it to Japan, and rebuilt the house and Meiji Mura on prime land. President Reagan, I believe it was in 1982 or so, dedicated the building, which then of course, we had a definite tie with Japan not on any political basis because this was not a political museum, but through other relations. That house stands on prime land with an American flag flying over the house.

MR: And the dismantling and rebuilding couldn't have been a small feat. Can you describe that house?

JT: That's right. They took it apart piece by piece by piece, numbered everything, and I don't know how long that took. And they finally shipped it to Japan, and then they rebuilt the entire home back to how it was.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.