Oregon's Japanese Americans: Full Documentary | Oregon Experience

Summary

The documentary traces the history of Japanese Americans in Oregon, from the growth of immigrant communities and farms to wartime incarceration, postwar rebuilding, and the later campaign for justice and remembrance. Its central themes are the contributions Japanese Americans made to Oregon, the consequences of racial prejudice, and the importance of defending civil liberties.

Community building and economic life

• From the late 19th century, Japanese immigrants—known as Issei—came to the Northwest for work in canneries, railroads, and agriculture. Many initially expected to return to Japan after a few years, but stayed, married, and raised families.
• Portland’s Nihonmachi, or Japantown, became a vibrant neighborhood with shops, restaurants, hotels, markets, bathhouses, schools, and professional services. Families created close networks for mutual support.
• Japanese American families also established farms in the Willamette Valley, around Gresham, and in the Hood River Valley. Farming was often a family enterprise, with parents and children sharing the work.
• Issei were barred from becoming U.S. citizens. Their American-born children, the Nisei, were citizens and their parents’ hopes for the future. Families emphasized education and built institutions, including Japanese-language schools.
• Japanese farmers’ growing success provoked hostility. The Hood River Anti-Asiatic Association formed to oppose Japanese landholding, and Oregon’s 1923 Alien Land Law prohibited Issei from owning or leasing land. Much property was held in the names of Nisei children.

Pearl Harbor and the loss of rights

• Before the United States entered World War II, federal agencies monitored Japanese Americans and kept lists of people considered potentially dangerous. After Pearl Harbor, authorities arrested community leaders, froze assets, shut businesses, and restricted what people of Japanese ancestry could possess.
• Some Issei were sent to Justice Department internment camps without criminal charges. Families were left unsure where detained relatives had gone or what would happen to them.
• In 1942, Executive Order 9066 authorized military exclusion zones. The government imposed a curfew on people of Japanese ancestry and ordered their removal from the West Coast, including American citizens. Minoru Yasui challenged the curfew, but the courts upheld it as a military necessity.
• Japanese Americans had to sell or abandon homes, businesses, farms, and possessions, often at severe losses. Families were transported first to temporary assembly centers—such as Portland’s converted livestock pavilion—and then to more permanent camps.
• The camps were isolated, crowded, and exposed to harsh weather. Barbed wire and guard towers enclosed the residents. Families lived in barracks with little privacy and shared communal facilities.

The Nyssa labor program

• A shortage of farm workers threatened Oregon’s wartime sugar-beet production. Oregon officials and agricultural interests proposed bringing Japanese Americans to Eastern Oregon for farm labor.
• The federal government approved a pilot program in Nyssa, outside the West Coast exclusion zone. Japanese Americans volunteered to work there, where many lived in camps and worked for local farmers.
• The program showed that Japanese Americans could live and work in local communities without causing the feared disruption. Some workers later established lives and farms in the area, and the experiment was adopted elsewhere.

Life, resilience, and wartime choices

• In incarceration camps, residents organized community life: they elected block leaders, staffed hospitals and schools, worked in mess halls, grew food, and formed social and athletic groups. The documentary emphasizes both the injustice of confinement and the resourcefulness with which people tried to create livable communities.
• Some young adults left camp to attend colleges outside the exclusion zone.
• Japanese Americans served in the U.S. military, including in military intelligence and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which joined the 100th Battalion. Their service demonstrated patriotism while they and their families faced discrimination at home.
• A loyalty questionnaire created serious conflict, especially questions about military service and renouncing allegiance to the Japanese emperor. Some people refused to answer or answered “no”; those known as No-No Boys were labeled disloyal, and many were sent to the more restrictive Tule Lake camp.
• The film presents different wartime responses—military service, protest, and refusal—as part of a larger struggle over citizenship, loyalty, and justice.

Return and rebuilding

• When the war ended, Japanese Americans returned to homes and communities where they often faced hostility, housing discrimination, and economic barriers. Some had lost their farms and businesses; others were told not to return or encountered threats and vandalism.
• In Hood River, the American Legion removed the names of 16 Nisei soldiers from a courthouse honor roll. Public criticism and the efforts of local allies helped restore the names.
• Neighbors and advocates, including Reverend Sherman Burgoyne and Arline Moore, helped returning families with practical needs and worked to educate the wider community.
• Some Japanese Americans rebuilt businesses and farms; others moved elsewhere. Portland’s former Japantown had changed during their absence, and returning residents found that the neighborhood had become Chinatown.
• Over time, legal barriers changed: Oregon’s Alien Land Law was struck down in 1949, and the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act allowed Issei to apply for citizenship. The documentary also notes that some survivors continued to feel deep anger or pain, while many families avoided discussing the camps for years.

Redress and remembrance

• Beginning in the 1970s, the Japanese American Citizens League and community members campaigned for an official government apology and compensation.
• A federal commission concluded that the wartime exclusion was not justified by military necessity, but was driven by race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.
• The 1988 Civil Liberties Act provided a formal apology and $20,000 in tax-free payments to eligible survivors who were still living. The film credits both the Nisei soldiers’ service and the organizing work of the JACL, while also recognizing the role of draft resisters and No-No Boys in the broader pursuit of justice.
• Minoru Yasui continued to challenge his curfew conviction, which was later vacated. In 2015, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
• Memorials, the Japanese American Historical Plaza, annual camp pilgrimages, and tributes to Nisei soldiers preserve these histories. The documentary closes with a call to remember incarceration as an American story and to prevent such violations of rights from happening again.

Speakers and sources featured

The subtitles identify the following interview or quoted speakers by first name or surname; they do not provide full names for everyone:

• Community members and descendants: Lawson, Yoji, Homer, George, Henry, Bessie Asai, Linda, Reid, Aya, Taka, Holly, Angela, Peggy, Sumi, Matthew, Chisao, Joan, and the late Shige Imai.
• Named historical figures and public voices: President Franklin D. Roosevelt; General John DeWitt; General Douglas MacArthur; Minoru Yasui; Governor Charles Sprague; Governor Clark of Idaho; and Reverend Sherman Burgoyne.
• Other featured voices and sources: The documentary’s narrator and archival announcers, whose names are not given; the Hood River News; wartime government and War Relocation Authority films; and letters, newspaper advertisements, and archival statements quoted in the documentary.
• Production: Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Oregon Experience, produced in partnership with the Oregon Historical Society.