In this great land of freedom: The Japanese pioneers of Oregon - Softcover

Inada, Lawson Fusao; Kikumura, Akemi; Worthington, Mary; Azuma, Eiichiro

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1881161013 ISBN 13: 9781881161011

Publisher: Japanese American National Museum, 1993

Synopsis

Published in conjunction with an exhibition developed collaboratively with the Oregon community. Includes original poetry by Japanese American poet laureate Lawson Fusao Inada and rare photographs of pre-war Issei life in the Northwest.

About this title

About the Author:

Eiichiro Azuma is a Japanese-language curator and researcher. He was a curator for "In This Great Land of Freedom: The Japanese Pioneers of Oregon," and an assistant curator for "Sumo USA: Wrestling the Grand Tradition." He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in history at UCLA.

Dr. Akemi Kikumura is an anthropologist and an author of plays, short stories, books, and professional articles. Currently, she is the Director of the International Nikkei Research Project, an innovative project that has assembled an impressive multidisciplinary and multinational research team of 21 scholars and 14 institutions, located in 10 different countries. This collaborative research project seeks to identify the transformative processes involved from "being Japanese" to "becoming Nikkei," (a person of Japanese ancestry who has settled in a country outside of Japan).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Between 1843 and 1860, more than 250,000 pioneers began the journey across the Oregon Trail heading west. In 1859, Oregon became one of the United States and was still a young state with undeveloped forests and virgin farmlands when the Japanese immigrants arrived in the 1880s. Called Issei, the first generation, Japanese immigrants, like all pioneers, struggled to survive in their new environment. Unlike most other immigrants, the Issei were classified as "aliens ineligible to citizenship" under American naturalization laws. They had to combat social and legal discrimination while they worked to create farms, businesses and communities for themselves and their children. Until today, the history of this courageous racial minority has been largely ignored. Using primarily Japanese-language sources, this essay uncovers some of the forgotten history of the Oregon Issei and narrates their experiences as "aliens ineligible to citizenship" from 1880 to 1952.

About this edition

• Publisher: Japanese American National Museum
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 1881161013
• ISBN 13: 9781881161011
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48