Licensing

How were they selected?: Daiichi Takeoka

One of Portland's early Japanese immigrants, Daiichi Takeoka emigrated from Hiroshima in 1900 at the age of 18. From a farming family and with a mid-grammar school education, he worked on the Seattle, Portland & Spokane Railroad, in the timber industry, and at the Portland Hotel as a bellhop. Daiichi earned a law degree in 1912 from the University of Oregon and was recognized with a special trophy honoring his accomplishments, shown here. Japanese were not allowed to become citizens, though, and as a non-citizen he was not able to practice law. As a result, he worked for the Swift & Co. meat packers selling fertilizer to farmers.

Daiichi Takeoka was arrested on December 7, having been identified as a community leader. After the FBI left their home, his wife, educated as a teacher in Japan, looked in a closet underneath a stairway and noticed that all of the textbooks she used as a teacher at the Montavilla Japanese school were gone. She wondered why they would take the simple phonetic alphabet books.