Densho Digital Archive - George Katagiri Interview (denshovh-kgeorge

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GK: And then, in the meantime, my wife and I had gone on several elder hostel programs and trips, and we were kind of enjoying our retirement even though I was working part time, but we were very comfortable financially. And when I retired completely, it wasn't, in a month later, I got this call from Los Angeles, and they were saying, "Well, George, this is the Japanese American National Museum, and we want to put together an exhibit in cooperation with the Oregon Historical Society about the Isseis in Oregon. And we, it's been recommended that you would be a good person to handle this project." And I thought, my gosh, a California outfit coming up to Oregon putting together an exhibit on Oregon Nisei. They'd take all of our photographs and artifacts, and I wanted nothing to do with it, so I turned them down, and I told them why. And they says, "No, no, no. You have the wrong impression. We will not take anything out of the state. We will only take photographs of photographs and photographs of your artifacts, and we'll keep those in our files, but nothing will be removed from Oregon." And I thought, well, if that's the case, that makes sense. And then I said, "But I don't know anything about the Nikkei history, or I don't know anything about Issei history." All my life was in education, and all my contacts was with the Caucasian community. And they says, "Well, we'd still like to have you handle it." So I accepted and worked on that for a year. The National Museum poured a quarter of a million dollars of resources into this project. We worked very closely with the Oregon Historical Society, and we came up with this traveling exhibit, and it was a major accomplishment. I got a lot of recognition. And in fact, it was one of the most popular exhibits ever held at the Oregon Historical Society up to that time, and then it was a traveling exhibit.

So it was there a good five or six months, and then it traveled to places like Medford, Boise, Salem, and a number of other places. And then we get a call from Hood River saying they want the exhibit there. And we thought, oh my gosh, what are we going to do, because the exhibit contains, part of the exhibit contains what happened in Hood River right after the war, and it does not put Hood River in a good light. We have the newspaper spreads from Hood River that where the citizens of Hood River saying, "We don't want the Japs back here. Please sell your property to the whites," and blah, blah, blah, with their signatures on the newspapers, dozens and dozens of the prominent citizens. And then we had statements from the Hood River American Legion damning the Japanese, and they spear headed the campaign to, for the community not to sell any goods to the Japanese as they were returning. And I thought, well, what's going on happen if this exhibit goes up to Hood River? Then I ask, "Oh, where's it going to be held?" They said, "In the American Legion Hall." I thought, oh my gosh. And I said, "Does everybody know what has happened in the past?" And they did. Of course, this is happening in 1994, and all the negative stuff happened way back in 1946. And, but still in my mind, it was something that happened up there in the American Legion Hall. But we made the arrangements. We took the exhibit up there, and whose picture should be on the walls but the leader of the American Legion who was active at the time, and all the other leaders were up there. And we finally got the exhibit up. And someone said, "Hey, George, the son of that man is looking, is in the exhibit now looking at the exhibit." And I said, "Who, which was is he?" And so they pointed him out, and here's a big young man, and he was very carefully going through the exhibit, not saying anything. And of course, by this time, the American Legion had completely changed, and a lot of the people who were active in it were Nikkei people. But still, the remnants of the old American Legion was still there. But it went off, it went off very well, and I thought, well, it was worth it. We've gotten over the hump. Things have changed for good, so be it. So that happened.

And by the time this exhibit was pulled together and by the time, I traveled all over this state picking up artifacts. We went through the Yasui barn with Homer and looked at all the artifacts that his dad had saved and went through all the clothing that were now rat infested with all the mice droppings in it, and it was fascinating. Then we went up into other farms and picked up the mochi usu and the kine, what they used to pound mochi in. We brought those back. We picked up, for some reason, the people in Hood River seemed to have most of the artifacts. Maybe it was because they owned their own property, and before the alien land law took place. And so when they came back, they were able to save all the things that they had accumulated. But they had screens that their fathers had made in the camps, and they were loaning all of these things to us. So it was, I became interested in a year, a few years in about the Issei of Oregon and was building up my knowledge of what happened among the Isseis. And one thing became apparent, here it's in the '90s. Most of these or many of them were no longer living, and they were, the few remaining were dying. And then we found out that the Nisei were taking their diaries and throwing them away because they couldn't read them, and a lot of the documents were being destroyed. We thought, oh my gosh, we need to put a stop to this.

So the concept of a legacy center began to develop. It was very clear that we needed a place where we can collect these things before they all disappeared. And so the idea of the legacy center started, and a group got together, and it kind of steam rolled, and it developed into the program that we see today. And we could see, so we've collected the history of all of these things at the legacy center, and we can also see the big picture of what's happening because for a while there, I thought, well, we're interested in the history of the Issei, but they're gone, and we're interested in the background of the Nisei, and they're leaving us quite rapidly. And once the Nisei are gone, who cares about the Nikkei. And then we looked around and we said, well, the Nikkei, the ethnicity of the Nikkei is disappearing, you know. Half my grandkids are hapas. They're half, half Caucasian and half Japanese, and I don't know how interested they are in their legacy. And I thought, well, it's, what good is it going to do to develop a good viable legacy program if the group is disappearing? And it's, then I ran into a couple of situations where I was taking my two sons who are pure Japanese, and my grandson who is half Japanese, and the four of us were headed down for Tule Lake, and I wanted to show them Tule Lake and explain the camp to them and go on down to Lake Tahoe and a place called Bodie, a ghost town called Bodie and Yosemite and come home. And on the way down, we went into a family restaurant in Klamath Falls. So the four of us walked into the restaurant, and we were guided to a booth, on the side of the restaurant, and we could tell that most of the patrons in the restaurant stopped eating and were kind of staring at us as we walked across the restaurant. Nothing was said, and we ordered a regular lunch and we had lunch and we left. But on the way down the highway, my grandson said, "I never want to come back to this town again." He picked up something, about, just eating at that restaurant in Klamath Falls that he didn't like. And here, he looks Caucasian. He can get by, all of his friends are Caucasians, and still for him to pick this up, I thought was very significant. And it seems to me that he needs to know what his legacy is. In fact, he already knows quite a bit of his legacy, and that's why he picked up whatever ambiance he picked up. And a couple years later, this same kid, he's a senior in high school, and I said, Nick, I said, "How come you never had a girlfriend when you're in high school?" He went on several dates, and each date the girl had to ask him to go on a date. And he said, he says, "I don't know." He says, "If I ever find a girlfriend, I'd like to find one like me." And that told me a lot. That told me a lot. And so I think what the legacy center is doing, collecting all these things and carrying on these educational programs, is important even if the Issei and the Nisei are leaving us. We need to continue that program so that the young people know what their legacy is, and I'm sure things like this are happening to all families, and...