Oregon Nikkei Endowment Gift Shop :: Japanese American Books and Gifts

Along the Sandy: Our Nikkei Neighbors
[978097171434]

$20.00

Click to enlarge

by Clarence E. Mershon

A project by Clarence Mershon, Crown Point Country Historical Society, to recognize and honor our neighbors of Japanese ancestry, who farmed the land as our parents did and whose children were our classmates in East Multnomah County schools. Their sons fought alongside their school mates in World War II against a common enemy.

From the Foreward by the author:
...The December 7, 1941 attack by the Empire of Japan at Pearl Harbor certainly created uncertainty and anxiety for our neighbors of Japanese ancestry. However, their youngsters continued to attend Springdale and Corbett schools without incident. They harvested the spring crop of spinach, which sold for a good price. Early potatoes were planted and the strawberry fields, weed-free and carefully tended, were in bloom, portending a bumper crop. The cabbage and cauliflower beds had been seeded, with sufficient plants emerging to plant acres of cabbage and cauliflower...With strawberries and potatoes, the hard, painstaking work is done and the harvest near.

However, our neighbors, these very efficient and productive farm families, will not share in the prosperity engendered by the conflict that affects them so personally. Hiro Takeuchi sells his new 1941 Pontaic at a bargain price. Their farm equipment will be used by others. The farmers that rent the fields left by our neighbors on May 12, 1942, will prosper. Because of good prices and excellent markets, these farmers build up their wealth during the war years. This war-driven prosperity often provides the capital that allows them to purchase the land that our Nikkei neighbors formerly farmed. For many Nikkei families, after being torn in 1942 from a stable and secure life on the farm, their world suddenly shrinks to a confined, monotonous extistence in a facility built for animals. The "assembly center" to which our neighbors reported was the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Center near Jantzen Beach in North Portland. There, stalls and other areas designed for livestock were hastily converted to living quarters for families...A crash program to build internment camps was underway, but most of our neighbors spent the summer months of 1942 at the center, lacking privacy, adequate toilet and bathing facilities and furnishings. To make matters worse, the hot summer days of 1942 brought innumerable flies, which added to the discomfort experienced. Our neighbors' loss of freedom, privacy and dignity there is only the beginning of an interlude unimaginable to most Americans. Because of their Japanese ancestry, our neighbors have become a prisoners-of-war in their own land.

This product was added to our catalog on Sunday 06 August, 2006.

Customers who bought this product also purchased

Nihonmachi: Portland's Japantown Remembered

Portland's Japantown 1940