Japanese pioneers came back to Valley after WWII internment

YAKIMA, Wash. — A century ago, Motokichi Hirahara left his home on the southern coast of Japan for the fertile soil of the Lower Valley, where he began growing watermelons, cantaloupes and vegetables near Wapato.

Nearly four decades later, in 1942, he would meet his end at age 69 in an internment camp in a remote part of Wyoming.

He and other Japanese were among the first farmers on the Yakama Indian reservation, where they broke ground and put it into production.

But their stories and accomplishments remain mostly absent from local museums and historical references.

That's because only a few of the estimated 1,200 to 1,600 Japanese who once lived in the Yakima Valley came back after being interned in faraway camps during World War II.

Anti-Japanese sentiment ran high in the Valley, said Lon Inaba, a grandson of one of the early Japanese pioneers.

"They weren't wanted," he said. "If your neighbors lobbied to get you out of here, would you want to come back?"

But the Hiraharas, as well as the Inabas, were among a few families that did.

Because they did, the Japanese story is about to be told in more detail.

Marking the 100th anniversary of her great-grandfather's arrival and preserving her family's legacy, Patti Hirahara recently donated countless artifacts of her family's migration and life in the Valley to the Yakima Valley Museum.

There are portraits of her grandparents, passports of her great-grandparents, steamship passes, land leases, pictures of the defunct Pacific Hotel in Yakima that her grandfather ran, and photos and certificates noting the 50th anniversary of the Yakima Buddhist Church.

There are also Japanese ceramic bowls painted with flowers, her father's lettered track sweater from Washington State University, and a 1997 reunion book of the Heart Mountain internment camp.

"I know this is what they would want me to do," she said of her grandparents. "This will be the start for the museum to have its collection from the Japanese pioneers."

Until now, the museum only had a few historical pictures of unidentified Japanese, and a videotaped interview and written story of the Matsushita family, who where among the larger Japanese growers in the Lower Valley. They grew hay, potatoes, and wheat just north of Harrah.

"We're very excited because it's a very large percentage of Yakima Valley's past," said museum curator Mike Siebol. "And for a museum, we really need the objects to make that connection."

The exhibit should be on display at the museum sometime next year, said museum curator information designer David Lynx.

"I think here at the museum, we're always interested in telling local people's stories," he said.

This is just one of four exhibits that Patti Hirahara is putting together. She is donating more than 900 photographs that her grandfather, George Hirahara, took while at Heart Mountain to an exhibit there.

She's also donating artifacts for exhibits at Washington State University -- where her father, Frank Hirahara, was elected to the Athletic Council in 1946 -- and to a museum in Anaheim, Calif., where her grandfather moved in 1992.

When he moved, she gathered many of the artifacts from the attic of his home at 21 E. Washington Ave., where he owned property and rented land to a nearby car lot and other businesses.

A resident of Anaheim, she had to rent a van to bring the artifacts here.

"All things relevant here will be donated here," she said.

She says she doesn't know too much about her great-grandfather, but the exhibit should tell in detail the story of her grandfather, who served as an ambassador of sorts.

"When folks would come over (from Japan), he'd take them around, to farms, through town," she said.

Unlike many Japanese, he elected to return to the area after being released from the internment camp. He didn't hold any grudges against anyone over internment, said Al Frank, who rented land from him for a service station in 1941 and later a car lot.

"He always thought the government had to do it," Frank said. "He said, 'This is my country. Japan is not my country anymore.' He understood it."

But there were hardships.

George Hirahara was unable to run the hotel while at the camp and he eventually lost the business.

In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, only Japanese from the coast to the Cascades were to be placed in camps. But state Granges and American Legions and others lobbied to have the zone extended across the Valley and to the Columbia River, said Inaba, now the area's spokesman on Japanese pioneers.

A few Yakima Valley residents stood up in defense of the Japanese here. Others, however, wholeheartedly endorsed the internments.

Those interned were given little time to gather their belongings. Many personal items were lost, as were the crops they planted, Inaba said.

But anti-Japanese sentiment began long before the start of World War II, he said. Federal laws prohibited Japanese from owning land. Many leased land from the Yakama Nation while white settlers were staking out land off the reservation, Inaba said.

In fact, Japanese are credited with clearing and putting into production roughly 20,000 acres of reservation land and with helping dig the first irrigation canals, he said.

Early Japanese were doing well, Inaba said. There were roughly 800 living in Yakima, and about the same number living in the Wapato area, he said.

"The Japanese were there before Wapato was Wapato," Inaba added.

But federal laws in the late 1920s began prohibiting Japanese from leasing land, he said.

"And then they were stripped of everything they had. So my grandfather went broke. He went from riches to rags."

Despite the hardships, the Japanese continue to exist in the Valley and remnants of their history are still visible.

George Hirahara was a collector of grain motors, and one he rebuilt is still on display at Fullbright Park in Union Gap.

The Yakima Buddhist Church continues to serve the community, and members of the Japanese community still put peonies on more than 300 graves in the Japanese section of the Tahoma Cemetery.

Hopefully, more Japanese will be willing to tell their families' stories, Patti Hirahara said.

"What we hope this will do is get the local community up and get their stuff to the museum," she said.

* Phil Ferolito can be reached at 509-577-7749 or pferolito@yakimaherald.com.

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