Densho Digital Archive
Oregon Nikkei Endowment Collection
Title: Homer Yasui Interview II
Narrator: Homer Yasui
Interviewer: Margaret Barton Ross
Location: Portland, Oregon
Date: October 10, 2003
Densho ID: denshovh-yhomer-02-0002

<Begin Segment 2>

HY: But Portland was a huge port of entry for the Japanese. One of the reasons for that is around 1900, the railroad business is going great guns, and the reason why it was going great guns is because the Chinese laborers were excluded. Now I don't know whether you're familiar with the Chinese Exclusion Act, but that was enacted in 1882, and it said that no Chinese laborers were allowed in the United States anymore. And every ten years, thereafter... oh, yeah, every ten years thereafter, they renewed that, so they excluded them from 1882, and that immediately stopped the tens of thousands of Chinese laborers, mainly the railroad workers, from coming to the United States. Those who were already here could stay on. But you know, over the years, they're getting older. So about eighteen, twenty years later in the 1900s, the labor force is getting too old, and they were dying off, and they're going back to China and so on. So the railroad magnates, the big shots, Jim Hill and Leland Stanford Huntington, they hired Japanese laborers to come over, and that's when the immigration really took off for the Japanese in Oregon. In Hawaii, it was earlier. In California, it was a little earlier. But in Oregon, it started around 1900.

Specifically, for example, my grandpa Shinataro Yasui came with his two boys, this is Uncle Taitsuro and Renichi in 1898. So my grandpa, I never really knew my grandpa, but he came with his two boys, these are my, these two boys are my father's little bit older brothers, and they worked on the railroad in Eastern Oregon for about two or three or four years, and then they went back to Japan in 1902. And then as I told you earlier on another story that my uncle got married. My father came here in 1903 and, because he knew that one of his uncles, one of his brothers, that's my Uncle Taitsuro , had stayed in the United States. Instead of going back with my Grandpa Shinataro and my Uncle Renichi, my Uncle Taitsuro stayed in the United States, and he was working out of Pocatello, Idaho, which was a big railroad hub in them days. In those days, this is in 1900s, there were thousands of Japanese working in the railroads here. At one time, there reportedly were 13,000 Issei laborers working on the railroads in the Pacific Northwest. And in order to recruit these young men, there were these labor contracting companies, and one of them was Shinzaburo Ban which was in, stationed in Portland. The other one you may have heard of was the Teikoku Company. This is the Matsushima family, and they also recruited laborers. And I don't know which of the organizations recruited my father, but he also worked on the railroad, and he started out in a little town of Turner which is a little bit south of Salem, and this is 1903. And then eventually, he worked on the railroad in Montana and in Idaho. But he was too small, and the work was so hard. It was very, very difficult work. So eventually, he says, "Hey, this is not for me. I came to the United States to learn English, and I'm going to do that." So he quit the railroad, and he came to Portland, and he studied English at the old Couch Street School which doesn't exist anymore. And then he took a job as a houseboy which was a very, very common thing in those days. Then from then on, from that year on, my father had decided, he determined after a couple years here that he's going to stay forever in the United States because even though there was discrimination and things were tough, it was worse in Japan because here in the United States, here in Oregon, they can make almost ten times as much money as they could back in Japan. For him, it was, probably the decision was relatively easy because he was the youngest son. There was only three boys in his family. But the oldest son in traditional Japanese fashion, they stay home to take care of the property and the families, their fathers and mothers. So Taitsuro , my oldest uncle, did go back, and he did exactly do that. But my Uncle Renichi, the middle uncle, and my father stayed in the United States for the rest of their lives. They went to Japan for visits, but they came... well, my Uncle Renichi came in 1890, went back to Japan, then came back to the United States. My father came in 1903, and they stayed. So that was, it was the railroad boom and logging and canning in the Oregon Territory that drew so many of the Issei.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.