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MR: So now let's go to Hood River and maybe you can talk about the anti-Japanese sentiment that began in Hood River so long ago and continued until after the war.

HY: Well, it did begin in Hood River a long time, but of course, the genesis of the anti, actually Oriental feeling probably began in California at around nineteen... well, before that is during the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 1880s. But that spilled over because the Chinese Exclusion Act did become effective in 1880 and renewed in 1892, and so no more Chinese were allowed to come to the United States. So that's when the heyday of the Japanese immigration to the United States occurred, and it was that period of time when anti-discrimination rose as early as 1903 in California, and then it spilled over to Oregon and Washington. Washington had a larger number of Japanese than Oregon did. So about 1903, they had an Asian Exclusion League which was started in California, and they had a chapter in Portland, not Portland, in Hood River, for a very short time, and then it became defunct because there just wasn't that much interested. That time, 1903, the Japanese were just beginning to come in to Hood River Valley. Before that, there were none. But anyway, in 1919, they did have a formal Oriental Exclusion League, and there were several of the bigwig officers that were bigwigs in the Hood River Caucasian community, but that wasn't the worst about it. The worst part about it was the American Legion, Hood River American Legion Post Number 22 which was formed around 1919 after World War One, and they had an instrumental man. His name was George C. Wilbur, and he was a lawyer. He was also a senator, an Oregon senator in the Oregon State Legislature, and he and his cohorts in the American Legion, the Hood River American Legion Post Number 22, I believe, first proposed the Oriental, the Asian Exclusion Act, the anti-alien land law, excuse me, the anti-alien land law which was directed at preventing Japanese Issei who were not eligible for citizenship from owning real property.

Now, let's go back a little bit. Before 1923 when that law was passed, it was possible for Issei who were not citizens who could not become citizens to own land in their own name, and many of them did including my father, and the way they did it many times, they bought the land outright with so much down and then make their mortgage payments. But others that went to Hood River, they hired out to clear the stump land that were logged over tree land from the forestry, and they removed the stump which was a very laborious, tedious job in those days, and most people didn't want to do that, but the young Issei laborer would do it. And so several of them owned their land outright before the Exclusion Act of 1923, okay, not the Exclusion Act again, I take it back. It's the Oriental, the anti-Asian land law is what it was. So that's the way they owned land. But in 1919, George Wilbur, American Legion Post Number 22, was instrumental in introducing a resolution to the National American Legion in Chicago, 1919s, stipulating that no person ineligible for citizenship should be eligible to own land in Oregon. They want to make that a national platform, and I think they did, and that was passed at the American Legion. And it was from that time on, the impetus was, became very great. And it was, the first measure was introduced in 1917 by this attorney George Wilbur who was a bigwig in the American Legion. And then by nineteen... whenever it was, '20s, Barge Leonard, who was also an American Legionary introduced it again in the Oregon State senate, and it did pass. And from 1923, then it, the law was passed. From then on, Asians, Orientals particularly, not particularly, people who were ineligible for citizenship could not own land in their own name. But there were ways to get around that, of course, and they did, and we can discuss that later on. But from 1923, the, you would think that the American Legion had gotten what they wanted. They prevented the "Japs" from owning the land in the Hood River Valley of golden hill who wants to own these golden roads and all that stuff. Well, they didn't. The drum beat didn't, it did let up a little bit, but it was still not enough. They wanted the "Japs" to not have the women work on the farm, hoeing the strawberry and carrying while they got the babies strapped on their back and so on. And so the agitation continued, but it was not nearly as bad, and there were, it was up and down. There were good points and bad points. For example, in 1923, there was a great earthquake in Japan. It's called the Kanto earthquake, and hundreds of thousands of people died in the greater Tokyo area. And so the American people being generous as they were, they sent money to help, succor the people in Tokyo. Well, so when that happened, then of course, that's the same year the anti-Asian land law passed in Oregon too and what the hell. How do you figure these things. American people on one hand are helping the Japanese people in Japan, but they're spitting on them in our own country when they're trying to do good. So these things are very, very hard to figure out. How come these things happen? I don't know.

But to carry on the story about the prejudice against the Japanese in Hood River, to me the unforgiving, yeah, I'll have to say that. The unforgivable thing is that the Hood River American Legion in the form of one particular person named Kent Shoemaker -- now, I don't know whether Kent Shoemaker did this as an official member of the American Legion or not, but he took out paid advertisements that said in effect these, we, the undersigned, and this is a petition, the undersigned do not want the Japs coming back to Hood River after the war, coming back period. And every week for I don't know, four weeks, five weeks, he'd solicit, he or they or whoever, the American Legion, would solicit people to sign their names on this petition saying, no, we don't want the Japs come back to Hood River. At that time, Hood River had a population, county population of maybe ten, eleven thousand. In total, 1500 people signed that petition, and some of those people who signed that petition were my classmates, my school classmates, some were my teachers, and many, many were people that my friends, that were friends of my father and my family, the people we've known for twenty and thirty and forty years, and people did that. Can you imagine fifteen percent of the population says that? Can you imagine what kind of effect that would have on the people who are hoping to come back? This is the only home they knew. That's devastating type stuff, but it happened, and so that's why I find it very, very hard. I don't forget. Maybe others do, I don't. To me, I'll live with that for the rest of my life. And if the others want to say, well, forgive and forget, that's fine. I mean, I'm not going to do it, but they can.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.