From May to November 1942, Nyssa [pronounced NISS-a], Oregon, served as the site of the first farm labor camp organized during the wartime Japanese American experience. Established as a result of the “Oregon Plan” for the forced removal and confinement of the state’s Nikkei residents, the camp held approximately three …
During the April 7, 1942 Salt Lake City governors’ meeting, George K. Aiken, executive secretary to Governor Charles Sprague of Oregon, presented the state’s plan for the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The so-called “Oregon Plan” was ultimately rejected by the War Relocation Authority …
One of the articles I’ve been working on for the Densho Encyclopedia on and off is a piece on the terroristic incidents that greeted the first Nisei to return to the West Coast in the early months of 1945. I had remembered reading a bit about houses being burned down, …
“When I got married and had kids, I didn’t try to share with them too many Japanese things. And when they were born, I made sure none of them had Japanese first names.” —May K. Sasaki
“They came here to be American.” —Earl Hanson
"Everywhere there is community feeling to be mended, vicious legislation to be defeated, many urgent jobs calling for attention from real friends of the real America." --Letter from Friends of the American Way
They were early pioneers. And especially on farms it was very difficult for them." --Kara Kondo
"The bitterness of the incarceration was there, but they were able to circumvent it somehow and live a pretty decent...community family life." --Mako Nakagawa
“The Nikkei I knew that were involved in the occupation…they were able to work more closely with the Japanese because the Japanese looked upon them as someone that could understand their culture, their history, and their motivation.”—Lucius Horiuchi
“I’m no hero, but I wear it for the guys that didn’t come back.” — George “Joe” Sakato
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