Passing It On—The Yasui Family and Japanese Americans in Hood River (updated)

Описание: Recorded at the Columbia Center for the Arts, Hood River, Oregon, on April 15, 2023.

Join noted historian Dr. Linda Tamura in a discussion with Barbara Yasui and Maija Yasui on the history of the Yasui family. The program touches on the Yasui Brothers’ Store and the critical role the Yasui family played in shaping Japanese American history in their home of Hood River, Oregon. While the Yasui family has been explored in books and documentary films, this public program offers personal insights and stories on the history of this prominent Oregon family. This program will also feature a display of select objects and materials preserved in OHS’s museum and research library collections relating to the Yasui family.

In 2022, OHS was awarded a LSTA Competitive Grant to process and make publicly accessible the Yasui Business records, a large manuscript collection preserved in OHS’s research library. Dating primarily from 1905–1942, the collection consists of over 180 linear feet of business and personal materials, over half of which is written in a pre-WWII Japanese language script that is difficult to translate. Homer Yasui, the father of Barbara and uncle-in-law of Maija, donated these records to OHS in 1991, yet due to its size and the language barriers present in the library collection, it was never fully processed. The grant allowed OHS to collaborate with a team of experienced translators — Yoko Gulde, Naomi Diffely, and Mami Kikuchi — whose work interpreting the records was essential for OHS catalogers.

Thanks to this project, the records will soon be available for researchers by the summer of 2023, and the translation and digitization of select documents will make highlights from this collection discoverable to anyone with internet access and will help researchers better understand its contents and place in the broader history of the Japanese American community of Oregon. This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the State Library of Oregon; this public program is presented in partnership with the Japanese American Museum of Oregon and the History Museum of Hood River County.

The library collection documents the experiences and contributions of businessman and noted community leader Masuo Yasui, Homer Yasui’s father, and his family of first- and second-generation Japanese immigrants who lived in Hood River, Oregon, during the first four decades of the twentieth century. Masuo Yasui operated the Yasui Brothers’ Store with his brother, Renichi Fujimoto, for more than thirty years before they were forced to close it permanently following President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, which allowed the U.S. Army to forcibly remove all Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans from the West Coast and incarcerate them in camps. The Yasui Business records document the brothers’ business activities and extensive support of their local community and offer a glimpse of what was destroyed by Japanese incarceration during World War II.