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MR: And what was the church?

HY: Well, church actually was not formally constructed as a church. It was made into a Japanese community hall. The primary movers of that were the Japanese Methodist congregants, and there were maybe a dozen or so. They said well, we got to have a place to meet and have church and school, social gathering, so on. So in 1926 or around there, the core group, nucleus group solicited money from the rest of the valley of Japanese in order to build this church which was on West Sherman Avenue in Hood River. And so they bought this property from donated, the land was donated, and they built this church over a two year period of time and built a, oh, pretty big community hall. It wasn't a church. That's a misnomer. It was a community, Japanese community hall. It's a two-story one, and eventually most, this is up until the war, 1941. Most of the large gathering in the valley took place at this Hood River Japanese community hall. Now in addition to that because of reasons that I don't know maybe competition, maybe sector in the region, I don't know, but there was also a small Japanese community hall in a little place called Dee. Are you familiar with the valley at all?

MR: A little.

HY: Dee is a very small place, but they also had a small Japanese community hall, and at one time I'm given to understand, I don't know this for a fact, that there was also a small one in Parkdale, Oregon, too, but I don't know that. Dee I remember that one very definitely. But the reason for that I think -- this is my own impression -- is that because the Dee one was mostly Buddhist run, and so they had close connections with the Buddhist population out there; whereas, the Hood River Japanese community hall, the only church function that went on was a Japanese Methodist church, so I think that had something to do with it, although I'm not sure. The Hood River community hall was much larger because they'd show movies in there, and they'd have judo tournaments in there and Christmas programs. So it would hold maybe four hundred people at one time, so it was big.

MR: The Methodist church comes up a lot in discussions of the Japanese American community. What was it about the Methodist church that made it so important to the Japanese community?

HY: Well, in my view, Margaret, it's because the two most prominent Caucasian Methodists, they were supervisors or superintendents were Frank Herron Smith and the other one was Ulysses Grant Murphy. Ulysses Grant Murphy was a very interesting character. He was a missionary in Japan, and he got mixed up with trying to rescue the Japanese prostitutes from the mob. And for his pain, he got beat up and almost killed, so of course, that induced him to leave Japan. So he came back, but he was fluent in Japanese. And in around 1924, 1926, he used to make the circuit of the Japanese congregation: Let's see, Toppenish, Yakima, Wapato, the Dalles, Hood River, Hillsboro. This guy did it out of the goodness of his heart. I'm sure he didn't do it for money. And he'd make these circuits and come to lecture and preach in Japanese. But before that in the, according to the village where my parents came from, there were Methodist missionaries in Nanukaichi, and my father and mother had both heard of them. They didn't belong to the Methodist church; although, my father may have converted by then. I'm not sure about that. But to me, Ulysses Grant Murphy was a very important person, and he's the one that really got the Methodist church ball rolling. And then after, that was -- their headquarters was in Seattle. The other one was the, I forgot the name of it, but Frank Herron, Doctor Frank Herron Smith was a minister. He was also a missionary. This was a big imposing guy, beautiful baritone voice, and he'd belt off these songs in Japanese [sings]. He was good, but he could lecture and speak in Japanese too. And so it was these two guys as far as I'm concerned that really brought the Methodists into the flock. Now, let me backtrack a little. The other person was Teikichi Kawabe who came to Portland in 1893, and he opened the Japanese, in those days, they called it the Methodist Episcopal Mission. Later on, it became straight Methodist. But Kawabe was also a Methodist minister. Why it was Methodist rather than Presbyterian or Baptist or Catholic, I'm not sure. Maybe it was fortuitous, I don't know. But those three people I think were the key to making so many of the Japanese, even today, a lot of them are Methodist in this area.

MR: Back to your early family life, what were your parents' hopes for their children and did they make it clear to you?

HY: Well, yes, they always made it clear, especially my father. You know, my father was a very determined man. And boy, he was always lecturing because I think all fathers may have a tendency more so than the mothers, I know, because, mothers are nurturing and all that. Fathers are what demanding somewhat. So my father would always tell his, especially to his boys, "Always work hard, do your best, be honest, all these Christian virtues and Methodist virtues plus the samurai virtues, plus the Confucius virtues, do good, be good," so it was always stressed. But mostly in his mind, number one, education. Education was so important to him. He wanted all of his children to go to college and so on and almost all of us did. And, but fortunately, he was backed in that by my mother too who was very big on education too. And so they all... well, not all. My mother and father insisted that we further our education and do our best academically, so I don't know. I suppose it was the result of their pressure maybe, we did do all pretty good, far better than I thought, but that was highly important. Ambition was very important to them.

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