What If Heroes Were Not Welcome Home?
By Sabine Wilson
For the TODAY
In 1942, carmakers began making war materials instead of cars, the minimum draft age was lowered from 21 to 18, American and Filipino defenders were forced to march on the “Bataan Death March” and the US led its first air raid attack on the Japanese Main Islands.
But there is another story from the same year that has been largely erased and historically overlooked that reveals the dark underbelly of America’s past during this time.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted Executive Order 9066 during World War II, it began the establishment of Japanese internment camps to isolate all people of Japanese descent 1942 to 1945.
The internment process is the subject of “What if Heroes Were Not Welcome Home?” a traveling exhibit from the Oregon Historical Society, opening this Wednesday, Oct. 6, at the North Lincoln County Historical Museum in Lincoln City.
Curators Linda Tamura and Marsha Takayanagi Matthews set out to tell a story that no one could find in their textbooks.
“This was something that I didn't learn from my family, the community or in schools,” Tamura said. “It was hidden.”
Tamura is a Hood River native who became a lifelong educator, researcher and author of works inclusing “Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence: Coming Home to Hood River.”
Matthews started as a history professor then worked in museums for most of her career, including many years as the director of museums and exhibits for the Oregon Historical Society.
On Nov. 29, 1944, the Hood River community put up a memorial board for 1,600 locals who served in the armed forces. But 16 names were blotted out.
“There were a large number of residents who signed notices saying Japanese weren’t welcome in the valley,” Tamura said. “I just couldn’t put my arms around it because it was such a shock to learn. I realized I need to ask more questions and figure out what happened.”
She began to track down old newspapers, classified ads, letters to veterans’ organizations and to the city, and even found a number of citizens who spoke out.
“What was really important to us was to integrate the stories of what I call ‘heroes unheralded,’” Tamura said. “Those who gained no publicity but simply stood up, spoke out verbally or in written ways, to stand up for civil rights and human rights for treating Japanese Americans and Nisei, second generation Japanese-American immigrants, civilly.
“It was a story that people didn’t really talk about — what happened to veterans when they came home,” Matthews added. “You think that the most greatly honored veterans would be treated as the heroes that they were but that was not the case in every instance.”
With the internment camps in place, the Nisei who heroically served in the United States Armed Forces in the South Pacific and Europe were returning home to a country they did not recognize.
“We wanted to engage visitors who likely never heard this story,” Tamura said. “We wanted to apply different scenarios where we asked people what they think it would be like to be in others’ shoes.”
To do this, Tamura and Matthews introduced stories like that of George Akiyama.
“George was heroic in Europe and earned a silver and bronze medal,” Tamura said. “He came home to get a haircut before he saw his parents, wearing his uniform and medals. He went to a barber he’d been to before but the barber replied with, ‘I ought to slit your throat.’”
Posing questions like: “How would you feel? What would you do if you learned that the US was at war with your parents’ homeland?” the exhibit combines history, anecdotes and provoking questions to shift the viewer's outlook from a passive observer to the mindset of Japanese people who were directly devastated by the propaganda of the time.
“To me, being able to spotlight the story in Hood River was very interesting and important,” Matthews said.
The exhibit also brings to mind anti-Asian sentiment in present-day America, where the COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to phrases like “kung flu” and “China virus.”
Data from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism revealed that hate crimes targeting Asians rose by nearly 150 percent after the virus arrived in the US.
“This exhibit was important then and it’s important today as hate crimes are on the rise,” Matthews said.
“This exhibit is an American story,” Tamura said. “And unfortunately, it is even more relevant today than ever. It is critical to have facts and to know our history.”
In the words of Spanish philosopher George Santayana, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”
The North Lincoln County Historical Museum is located at 4907 SW Hwy. 101 and is open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 am to 4 pm. For more information, go to northlincolncountyhistoricalmuseum.org.