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About Us

From the Dreams of Many, One Reality

The vision for the Legacy Center was initially adopted by the Oregon Nikkei Endowment Board in 1995. It envisioned a multi-purpose facility where items of historical importance to Oregon Nikkei could be preserved and where the unique character and traditions of its culture could flourish and find expression.

The first serious effort to document the history of Oregon's Japanese immigrants began in 1973. The "Issei Appreciation" project led to a collection of slides documenting the achievements of the Issei pioneers who settled in Oregon before discriminatory laws halted further Japanese immigration in 1924.

In 1990, the Japanese American Historical Plaza was completed at the north end of the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Conceived and guided by the Oregon Nikkei Endowment, the Plaza, along with its narrative of sculpted stones, stands as a permanent memorial to the lives of Oregon Nikkei and their determined pursuit of liberty, equality, and justice as American citizens.

Also in 1990, Portland hosted its first reunion of Oregon Nikkei who lived in the state before the start of World War II. Over 900 people attended from all over the world. The program focused on life in Japan Town, a once-triving section of Northwest Portland, where many attendees had lived, worked, and raised families. It was here that the idea of initiating a broad-based effort to document the story of Oregon Nikkei was born.

In the spring of 1992, the Nikkei community marked the 50th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066. Under the authority of this document, the military was directed to incarcerate all persons of Japanese ancestry living along the West Coast. A half-day dramatic program recounted the fear, grief, indignation, and bewilderment that swept through the Nikkei community in 1942 as entire families were herded into makeshift quarters at the Portland Assembly Center, formerly the Portland International Livestock Exposition. An extensively-researched videotape documenting this tragedy was also produced.

With funding from the Meyer Memorial Trust and support from the Japanese National Museum in Los Angeles, the Oregon Historical Society and the Portland Nikkei community, and exhibit honoring the first Issei pioneers in Oregon was developed in 1993.

It was while researching "In This Great Land of Freedom: The Issei Pioneers of Oregon" that the Nikkei community was alarmed to find that historical documentation relating to these early settlers was rapidly disappearing.

Cause for even greater concern surfaced in 1995 when 700 Nikkei residents of pre-WWII Oregon came together for a second reunion. Only five surviving members of the original Issei who settled in Oregon attended the reunion. Five years earlier, there were closer to 20.

The prospect of losing forever the legacy of their Issei forebears quickly moved the community to action. A committee was formed, and wqork began in earnest to loacte a site for what whould one day become the Legacy Center.

By 1996 and with the help of the late Bill Naito, the committee had located a potential site owned by the H. Naito Corporation on Northwest Front Avenue across from the Japanese American Historical Plaza. Negotiation for acquiring the property and bringing it up to city building codes began, but were suspended upon the untimely death of Mr. Naito. Subsequently, Sam Naito and the H. Naito Corporation proposed an alternative site in Old Town on NW Second Avenue. In September of 2004, the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center relocated to 121 NW Second Avenue, the current home of the Legacy Center.

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