History on the menu at Sukiyaki Dinner

WAPATO, Wash. -- Letters from Japan, shipping trunks, practice samurai swords and helmets -- all predating World War II -- will
be on display during Sunday's 49th annual Sukiyaki Dinner.

Members of the Buddhist church were cleaning out a storage room at the rear of the church when they found many artifacts belonging to Japanese pioneers who settled in the Valley in the early 1900s, said church member Yosh Uchida.

"We were going to clean it out for remodel and this is what rolled out," he said while looking at the old portraits of the first Japanese in the Yakima Valley. "This is literally a time capsule."

Other items included old luggage carts, cardboard fruit boxes, wash tubs and a kimono.

Only about a third of the items discovered will be on display at the dinner; the rest are going into a larger exhibit at the Yakima Valley Museum, he said.

Putting these items on display during the dinner is a perfect way to share the local history of the Japanese with the roughly 1,500 people expected to attend the event, said Lon Inaba, a third generation fruit grower and spokesman for the local Japanese-American community.

"The guys who started all of this are the ones that we're honoring," Inaba said, explaining that Japanese pioneers began farming in the Lower Valley about the turn of the century and helped dig the Wapato Irrigation Project that feeds some 136,000 acres on the Yakama reservation.

Roughly 1,200 Japanese lived in the Yakima Valley prior to World War II, but most of them were taken to internment camps in the wake of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

A few, such as the Inabas and Uchidas, returned to the Yakima Valley. Others moved elsewhere after the war. This weekend roughly 120 volunteers, some from as far away as Oregon and California, will help organize and prepare the dinner, he said.

Many of them are descendants of the early pioneers, he said.

"This is where their roots are," he said. "That's why they are coming back."

On Thursday, Uchida trucked in fresh vegetables, about 500 pounds of prime rib from Seattle and about 250 pounds of fresh yam noodles and bamboo shoots flown in from Japan.

Standing in the gym in Wapato, Tom Uchida, who recalls being a child at the Hart Mountain, Wyo., internment camp, reminisced about how vibrant the Japanese community once was in Wapato.

He said many Japanese lived behind the church on Second Street, and that there were Japanese stores.

"Behind here was all Japan town, this one block," he said.

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