OREGON NIKKEI LEGACY CENTER

This week Betty and I visited the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center for the first time. Japanese American generations each have their own name, but "Nikkei" refers to all the individuals who share Japanese ancestors. Their history in the United States is intriguing, often noble, and extraordinarily courageous at times because of the racial bigotry exercised against them as emigrants, particularly at the outbreak of war with Japan in 1941 because they "looked like the enemy".

Because of the attack on Pearl Harbor the usual prejudice toward the Japanese was magnified into the worst kind of racial profiling against hard working merchants and farmers who were only engaged in enjoying the American dream of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as they strived to make a place for themselves in many western communities. Indeed, their industry was often a significant part of the agricultural and labor supply on which the economy was based as it passed through the depression years. Nevertheless, the Japanese in America were unfairly held responsible for the war.

The frantic reaction of the government was to forceably remove everyone of Japanese heritage from the entire west coast of the country for fear they might include enemy agents. As a result 120.000 individuals, many of whom were women and children, were corralled in holding centers until ten "concentration camps" could be constructed in mostly isolated, desert areas for their incarceration. Many of those held were American Citizens whose civil rights were ignored; all of them were treated like prisoners. Only allowed to bring what they could carry (as one placcard in the certer points out) what they really brought and relied upon was "strength, dignity, and soul".

The map locates the ten internment locations where the detainees were held. The colored portion was the west coast zone from which the Japanese were excluded. Virtually all who had lived in those areas suffered the total loss of their properties and personal possessions. Although a few in the camps were allowed to relocate further east, and some students were allowed to continue their education in eastern schools, most detained Japanese remained restrained in the windy, dusty, cold, and inhospitable barracks to which they were assigned within barbed wire fences surrounded by towers and armed guards.

At first the young men were even refused the opportunity to serve in the armed forced in defense of the country. Later 100th Battalion and the the newly formed 442nd Regimental Combat Team were combined and these American-Japanese troops performed heroically time and again in European campaigns, not only proving their loyalty and devotion to America but demonstrating an extrordinary strength of will and character and courage. These soldiers suffered more casualties and won more combat awards that any other unit in the bitter battles of 1944-45. They were truly magnificient.

One more thought: The story of the noble and gentle Japanese who endured the traumas described above with such remarkable grace and dignity should be learned and remembered by all Americans. Efforts like the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center and the nearby commemorative park of memorial stones should be visited and appreciated and recommended to others. I promise you will be touched by the experience.

TULIP TIME IN BETTY'S HOME PARK

Last summer on a trip with friends, we visited the tulip fields south of Bellingham. Awed by the fields of tulips and entranced y individual varieties in a plethora of shapes and colors, we ordered a small selection, which Betty planted last fall.

If you like flowers, we recommend taking a springtime tour when the fields are in bloom. If Bellingham or the Vernon Valley areas are too far away, there are nice places near Woodland,WA, and displays are found south of Portland.

When this orange variety is in full sun, the petals are almost fluorescent. They just glow!

And way out front, from a former and long forgotten season of daffodils, this solitary white blossom popped up all alone last week. Hardy and resilient after all these years it is a survivor.

It has been kind of nice to have a few flowers again around here. Thanks, Betty.

ANOTHER READING POST

Maintaining a blog is much like having a pet. It has needs, and if those are neglected, one suffers anxiety and guilt. What to post? I should, I suppose, or folk will assume I shuffled off somewhere and forgot to keep breathing. Fortunately, there is always one reliable fallback: book reports. For example, Betty and I both recently read "the Secret Life of Bees" and enjoyed not only the read but some interesting discussions of our individual impressions. The book was suggested by Linda and Big Thanks to her. OK, I've had some really good reads lately, so here we go again. (Roughly in clockwise order)
#1. The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus. - Joshua Kendall. The New York Times got it right in its brief teaser: "It will charm the word nerd in all of us". Indeed, what wordsmith has not relied upon and often referred to Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases? Roget, living in an age of Industrial Revolution, Scientific Awakening, Cultural and Political Restrictions, and only slightly before Charles Dickens, for example, is a curious product of his times, his oscillations between depression and OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). You'll be intrigued at all the well-known names of people with whom he interacted or had at least some contact. He did seem to totter along that line between genius and lunacy, but the outcome is a blessing to all writers, at least in English. One note: you ought to persist through all the biographical baggage even if all you want to find out is his writing the thesaurus because it took him a lifetime. At times a doctor, a scientist/researcher, and an inventor, Roget achieved several other amazing accomplishments in his crazyquilt career: experiments with nitrous oxide, development of the log-log (logarithmic) scale on the slide rule making multiplication and division possible, and a dramatic escape from Napoleon's France. Pace yourself a couple of chapters at a time with this one.
#2. Capturing the Moment in Oils. - David Curtis.
#3. Landscape Painting Inside and Out. Kevin Macpherson. I'm still collecting what seem to be instructive books on oil painting, especially as related to either plein air or alla prima painting. The former concerns painting outdoors and the latter focuses upon completing a painting in a single session. Macpherson is one of America's current gurus in plein air and is highly respected in several media arenas, primarily oils and watercolor. Curtis seems to be the equivalent in England. I'm enjoying all the study and intend to begin applying what little I understand as soon as the rain lets up and it warms up to at least sixty degrees this spring.
#4. Tea Time for the Traditionally Built. - Alexander McCall Smith. Yeah, I'm a fan of detective Mma Ramotswe and her assistant Mma Makutsi. This is the tenth book in the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and while the plot in this edition seemed rather milder than in previous stories, the superb and subtle characterizations continue to fascinate me. This is reading that is cozy and most suitable with a cup of Precious' red bush tea, available in some local markets.
#5. Seeking Enlightenment, Hat by Hat; a Skeptic's Path to Religion. - Nevada Barr. Stop right here! Don't read this book if you expect it to be entirely from a "christian" viewpoint. That's the point, in fact. It's written by a person whose life has fallen apart and who desperately seeks relief for loneliness in a church. She is accepted just as she is (and there is a lesson too) without having to conform to any liturgical pattern. Here is her journey from an unreligious upbringing by non-religious parents to grasping at the meanings of fundamental spiritual matters like: What is God? Prayer? Faith? Forgiveness? Purpose? and about forty more topics in short chapters each thoughtfully revealing her processing of coming to an understanding of practical religion. Some passages seem like the blind novice is leading the one who thought he saw clearly. On another note, Barr writes some fine mysteries in Alaskan settings, none of which prepared me for the intriguing insights she openly shares in "Seeking Enlightenment".
#6. Messengers of the Risen Son in the Land of the Rising Sun; Single Women Missionaries in Japan. - Bonnie Miller. For over twenty-five years the author has been the "secretary/office manager/jill-of-all-skills" and keeper of the institutional memory at the Vancouver church where we attend. In recent years she has closely worked with a historian at Pepperdine University who encouraged her to write this book about lives of devotion and evangelism in a foreign land and culture. These inspiring stories relate the difficulties of such a mission in spite of inadequate funding, problems of health and material deprivation, and the often depressing isolation from home and family. Their collective labors and achievements are told and the message of their bold purpose will not fail to impress. Through her solid research, Bonnie Miller introduces us closely to a dozen of these heroic women and to scores more indirectly, women who proclaimed the gospel in Japan during a period of sixty years which included two World Wars. This is fine and authentic church history which deserved to be recorded.