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The
Senior Excursion - the early version of today's Mt. Shasta Spring Break -
often took the train to the Coast. One of those to make the trip was Portlander
Kakuji Okamoto (left), probably the first Oregonian of Japanese descent to
attend OSU. |
Below
left is the Cosmopolitan Club of OSU in the 1913 yearbook.
Among its 17 listed members were 5 Japanese students, and 1 American of Japanese descent, 29 year old
Portlander Kakuji Okamoto
(left),
secretary of the club. In 1942, Mr Okamoto, then of Santa Barbara, was
sent to Gila River concentration camp for the crime of having Japanese
ancestry. He was 58 years old. |
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"The
object and purpose of this club is to ... foster the spirit of universal
brotherhood. It also aims to foster the art of peace, to establish strong
international friendship and to carry out the motto of the organization,
'Above All Nations Is Humanity'...With hearty support of the students and
generous townspeople, a sum amounting to something over $245 was sent to
China to help save the starving people."- 1913
OAC Yearbook (the "Orange") |
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| Above: Chinese
Americans and others, including Cosmo Club members, picketing the port of
Portland in 1939 to protest the shipping of metal to Japan after Japan's
invasion of China. Longshoremen refused to cross the picket line, for
which the port owners later tried to deport their Australian American
president, Harry Bridges. |
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"Oregon State
University Japanese exchange student in business, Yoko Gomi, bows with
other international students Friday night in the Memorial Union ballroom
following a multi-cultural fashion show during the International
Thanksgiving dinner put on by the International Students of Oregon State
University. Students from other countries increase the diversity on
campus and offer glimpses of their own culture throughout the Corvallis
community."
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The
photo and caption, at left, is of a 2003 event by the OSU International
Students, a direct descendent of the Cosmopolitan Club of 1913, robbed by
OSU President Strand, 1942-61, of its humanitarian focus. |
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Immigrants
from Japan had always had a much higher educational level than those from other
nations, due largely to screening by the Japanese government, which was concerned about its
image abroad. The value placed on education was transmitted to subsequent
generations. It was not unusual, in 1942, to find farmers with only 10-30
acres
sacrificing to send 3 children to the university. Their children, coming to OSU, encountered great prejudice. Said OSU's Paul Shinoda:"I went to Oregon
State and had reserved a room at Buck Hall dorm. There's three dorms for
men, and Buck Hall was the one we had our name in for, for $10. Art
Kodani and I waited and the house mother came and said, "Just a minute now,
" and we sat in the lobby. In the meantime, Hakujin [ed.
note: 'white'] came in and the house mother took him up and assigned him a
room. And another fellow would come in. Art and I just sat there -
we're both Japanese you know. Finally the dean came, Dean Duwak, a real nice guy, and explained to us that they don't allow Japanese
in this dorm. This was 1931, the fall of 1931, and it was late in the afternoon already, so he said come to stay with us,
Mrs. Duwak and I, and tomorrow we'll look for a place and he found
us a rooming house." - Paul Shinoda
(left) OSU, 1931." We
didn't let it bother us," says another former student of the
discrimination in Corvallis.
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Art
Kodani, mentioned above, graduated with degrees in mathematics and
the social sciences and was, like Mr. Okamoto, imprisoned at Gila River, in Arizona, in
1942, for being of Japanese descent. At right is a picture of the
Gila River concentration camp in Arizona. The expectation that those imprisoned in
the camp would work for a token wage at the camouflage netting factory in
the foreground was a source of great friction and resentment. The
political leaders and the organizations in Oregon and on the West Coast who, in 1942, pressed for the
imprisonment of those whose ancestors had once lived in Japan, had always
conceived of the camps as a source of slave labor (see pages following). |
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| Above
left: Poling Hall in 1939; center: Poling Hall 1942; right: Poling Hall
today |
Ray Yasui, OSU 1934-36, had the same experience as Paul Shinoda with
the dorm policies of Dean Ulysses
Grant Dubach, Dean of Men as well as Dean of Political Science.
Ray Yasui and his family were imprisoned in 1942 at Tule Lake for the
crime of being of Japanese descent. The Ray
Yasui Dialysis Center here in Oregon is named for him.
His father was
sent to Fort Missoula, Montana, then Fort Sill, Oklahoma; thence to Camp
Livingston, Louisiana; finally to the Santa Fe Alien Detention Camp (INS),
which is where he spent over 2-1/2 years. While Mr. Yasui was at OSU, policies
were changed and he was permitted to live in Poling Hall (right,1936), although
Japanese American students were yet admitted into the dorms only in pairs. |
Ray
Yasui had a similar experience: "Dad
took Uncle Min and me to OSU (Min to register at Eugene). When we got to
Corvallis, we went to the dormitory, and the house mother at Poling
Hall - a lady by the name of Mrs. Cunningham - said, "Mr. Yasui, I'm
sorry, but would you be so kind as to wait a few minutes, and Dean Dubach,
the Dean of Men, will be over to converse with you". Dad thought that
something was not quite kosher. A few minutes later, a gray-haired
gentleman appeared on the scene. We went into Mrs. Cunningham's living
room, entered into the conversation. The gist of the matter was that Dean
Dubach told Dad that they could not enter an oriental into the dormitory.
This upset Dad quite a bit, because he was pretty hep on citizen's rights,
and that his kids were being good American citizens, and having all the
rights and privileges of any citizen. He [Dad] asked why such a ruling was
made, when at the University of Oregon, they accepted foreign
students‹Min was at the dormitory there. "Why did the OSU have such
a policy to exclude orientals"?
At this point, Mrs. Cunningham explained that several years ago they had
had a Korean student, who spoke very little English. As an incoming
freshman, he was being initiated into the hall, and he took the initiation
to be discriminatory acts towards him. He retaliated by fighting with
anyone who came within reach. And this was quite upsetting to the
administration. So they moved him out, and for several years it was an
unwritten rule that dormitories would not accept oriental students.
Dad was very upset about this. He told the dean that he was going to
Eugene; he would stop at the State Board of Higher Education office, and
take it up with the Chancellor, and, if necessary, go to court. He offered
me as a guinea pig‹enter the dormitory and prove that orientals could
get along with his classmates. However, this didn't appease Dean or Mrs.
Cunningham.
Surprisingly, the dean himself seemed undiscriminatory, and he offered to
take me into his home until such time as he could find me a boardinghouse.
So I moved into the Dubach's home for two weeks to a month, as a house
guest.... Shortly thereafter, a boardinghouse was located for me." |
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Similarly, OSU
banned Maxine Maxwell, a Salem African American woman, from the dorms
in 1929. Despite the racist policies Dubach was instrumental in enforcing -
and probably in formulating - Lewis
and Clark College, where Dubach taught after mandatory
retirements were introduced at OSU in 1947, today retains a Dubach
'chair' in the Political Science Dept., and Sigma
Phi offers scholarships in his name, primarily among southern
chapters. |
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Slats
Gill (left) - for whom Gill Coliseum was named - was coach in 1942 and is
reported to have said many times that no player of African descent would ever play ball at OSU so long
as he was coach of the team. He was right. The coliseum was named for him
while he was still coaching. He started in 1928 as head coach and wouldn't
leave until 1964. |
It
was the OSU class of 1939 which began to
come to terms, however tentatively, with the racism of our
ancestors. A Japanese American woman was named an OSU Queen. Waldo Hall
was opened
to Oregonians and other Americans of Japanese descent. Cauthorn,
Poling and Buxton were also opened up.
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Mabel Lee, Lucy Chow and Maxine Chinn
were featured with their prom escorts in the Beaver Yearbook. T.Z. Koo,
Chinese American evangelist and friend of Mahatma Gandhi was an invited
speaker, as was Rev. Thurmond Howard - also a friend of Gandhi, mentor of the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and the first African American to be named
president of a "major" university.
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Italian American opera singer
Ezio Pinza was an invited entertainer, as was the great African American
bassist and civil rights activist Paul Robeson. Left: OSU's Toshiaki
Kuge, a premed student in Cauthorn Hall
(below). For his crime of having Japanese ancestry, Mr. Kuge, in medical
school in 1942, was imprisoned in Tule Lake concentration camp. |
Above:
Portlander Lillian Mitsu Sato at Waldo Hall,OSU. Ms. Sato had entered OSU
in 1936 and was an athlete. For the crime of having ancestors who had
lived in Japan, Ms. Sato and her husband, OSU alum Tom Toyota, a highly
trained mechanical engineer, were imprisoned in 1942 in Minidoka concentration
camp in Idaho.
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"Mabel Lee, Maxine Chinn and Lucy Chow and their escorts." -1939
Beaver Yearbook |
Paul
Robeson |
Ezio
Pinza |
Thurmond
Howard |
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There is an irony in
Ezio Pinza's appearance. In 1942, Ezio Pinza was arrested for
being Italian. There is, in fact an oft-repeated story that FDR, in
dismissing the case for imprisoning Italians, did so by commenting that
they are `a
lot of opera singers.' It is also widely repeated that he did so on
October 12, 1942, for Columbus Day, due
to pressure from Mayor LaGuardia of New York, who was the national
Civil Defense chief.
Paul Robeson, phenomenal scholar, actor, singer and
athlete (All-American) who remains Rutgers'
star pupil of all time, spent a lifetime of persecution at the hands
of American racists in the US government who were determined to punish him for his political views and
for his untiring efforts on behalf of civil rights for those who are
African Americans. In the process, he would become ever more put on
the defensive and would eventually die, it is said, of the pressure. This
year, the US government is featuring him on a postage stamp.
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| Paul
Robeson in his award winning performance as the Emperor
Jones, by Eugene
O'Neil, who personally chose Mr. Robeson. |
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The promising trend of events came to a
screeching halt in 1942. OSU President Ballard was hospitalized for a
year, for "a nervous condition", which in 1942 was a euphemism
for depression or schizophrenia. His place was
taken temporarily by Francois Gilfillan, Dean of Science, until A. L.
Strand was hired. In time, Mr. Strand would be a participant in the McCarthy
witch hunts, firing 2 professors for their support of FDR's vice-president
Henry Wallace, whose platform was centered around an end to racial
discrimination. Under
Mr. Strand, the
Cosmopolitan club disappeared for a time then re-emerged devoid of its
global attention.
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Philosophers and
speakers on social issues were
largely replaced by
entertainers in major campus events - still characteristic of OSU - and the few
speakers were sponsored by racist groups like the John Birch Society. The Baptist
Club, the Evangelical Club, and a Religious Week appeared, fostered by the
most questionable characters on campus. The author of the racist Turner
Diaries (inspiration for Timothy McVeigh, Oklahoma City bomber), William
Pierce was hired and flourished, before leaving to become head of the
American Nazi Party after its leader, George Lincoln Rockwell was
shot. His letters to other faculty members are in various
collections in the OSU archives. The gains of the preceding decades were lost for 50
years.
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| The
annual sophomore Event was staged in racist 'black face' in 1946 under Mr.
Strand. OSU has named a hall for this man. |
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Left: An OSU Barometer
photo showing the domineering president of OSU, A.L. Strand, 'looming'
over the much-loved and admired Therese and Ralph Spitzer, whose firing he
initiated for their work on behalf of Henry Wallace's Presidential
candidacy. Mr. Wallace's campaign focused on the need to end racial
segregation, now the law. After
a good deal of searching following his dismissal, Mr. Spitzer found work at the Department of
Medical Research, University of Manitoba. He corresponded with OSU's Nobel
Prize winner, Linus
Pauling (right) and these letters are preserved in various archives,
including OSU. Mr.
Spitzer died this year in Minnesota.
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witch hunt of Mr. Spitzer was costly. It launched Prize winning
author and OSU faculty member Bernard
Malamud into writing his expose of
OSU and Mr. Strand, called A New Life. Above: Ava and Linus Pauling.
Mr. Pauling and Mr. Spitzer corresponded. The Paulings met
while they were students at OSU. Ms. Pauling heartily fought the
imprisonment of Americans in 1942, and after the war, their home was
vandalized repeatedly when they hired an American of Japanese ancestry. |
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Right:
Mr.
and Ms. Pauling met when he was teaching a course, as an OSU (OAC)
undergraduate, entitled 'Chemistry for Home Economics Majors'. After the
nuclear bombing of 2 cities in Japan, the Paulings joined Albert
Einstein's Emergency Committee
of Atomic Scientists. |
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The
2 circulated a petition calling for a nuclear test ban after Hiroshima - a
test ban now incorporated in a US
law - a petition that was signed by 10,000
scientists, they were hauled before the US Senate in the McCarthy era.
Their passport (right) to travel abroad was taken from them after the
Senate called Mr. Pauling "the number one scientific name in virtually every major activity of the Communist peace offensive in this
country". |
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Especially
active, among the Oppens' circle, in opposing the imprisonment, was the
poet Kenneth Rexroth, who spent much of 1942-4 assisting friends and
neighbors in escaping the imprisonment.
Mr. Rexroth read Japanese and translated many poets, including Ki
No Tsurayuki, into
English. He lived in the Filmore district of San Francisco at the
time, which before the imprisonments was the heart of "Japantown", after the San Francisco earthquake. After the
imprisonments, the district was occupied by the shipyard workers who sent
a magnificent Navy and merchant marine to sea. Many of these shipyard
workers were of African
descent. Above Right: the Japanese American fish market on Geary street, in 1910. The
Oppens, Mr. Rexroth and others patronized Nyogen
Senzaki, who in 1925 opened an apartment-zendo on Bush Street in 'Japantown'. |
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At
right in the photo above is Allen Ginsburg. |
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Another
OSU couple who opposed the imprisonment of Americans of Japanese ancestry
were the circle of poets (above) around Pulitzer prize winner George Oppen.
George
and Mary (below) were expelled for staying out all night in 1926, a
clear violation of the
rules. It was an era, retired OSU professor Roger Weavers remembers
from his mother's experience related to him:
" a woman was expelled for simply being on 2nd.
Street", even then the downtown
thoroughfare. |
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was the first regular instruction in Zen offered to western students. It
was a seminal moment in the preservation of the tradition in the US. Above
right is Mr. Senzaki's last
testament. For the crime of having Japanese ancestry, Mr. Senzaki was
sentenced to Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming, nearly 40 years
after his arrival in America. His occupation was listed in camp documents
as clergyman. He was not even born in Japan, but in Siberia, on the
Kamchatka peninsula. He was 66 years old. |
How
can I forget his angry face?
How can I forget the blows of his strong fist?
Thirty years in America,
I worked my way to answer him --
Cultivating a Buddhist field in this strange land.
This autumn, the same as in the past,
I have no crop but the growth of my white hair.
The wind whistles like his scolding voice,
And the rain hits me,
Each drop like his whip.
Hey! - Nyogen
Senzaki -1935 |
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Mr. Senzaki
had inestimable influence and his writings are still in great demand and are
continually being republished. The most widely read is The Search for 10
Bulls. While at Heart Mountain, he assisted in Buddhist activities,
including the Young Buddhist Association. |
Oregonian
Roy Higashi (right) was involved in the Young Buddhist Association at
Heart Mountain concentration camp: "Dad ...was
interned at Heart Mountain and was involved with the YBA (Young Buddhists
Association), as was my mom... After the war, he became an ordained
Buddhist minister..." - Americ Higashi |
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Ken
Rexroth never lost touch with his friends and mentors in San Francisco who
were of Japanese descent. His technique of helping, during the
"evacuation" was ingenious.: "One
day we were waiting for the evacuation step-by-step to catch up with us.
We were worried because Hazuko was still ill. She said something about how
she would like to learn knitting and the design of knit and crocheted
dresses. I thought, “Oh my God, why didn’t I think of this before?”
In those days, cheap pulp magazines used to run phony correspondence
school ads: “Copy This Picture and Win a Scholarship to the Midwest Art
Academy in Chicago.” [I
remember these ads well into the 'Seventies, on the back of matchbooks
covers, in comic books, and so forth] There
were correspondence schools for all kinds of things, but the most
profitable were in photo retouching, art, dress design, and knitting. I
knew the field. I’d worked in it myself and it was strictly a grift. I
called up one of these guys and said, “How about it? Will you take a
Japanese girl and sign her registration papers if she pays the fee? ”He
said, “Why sure, hell yes. I think this evacuation is a horrible thing.
As a matter of fact, they don’t have to pay registration. But it’s a
fair amount of trouble, so if I get a check for a fin or a sawbuck it’ll
be okay.” It was amazing. That response was almost universal; whereas,
if you were a legitimate customer, they got all the money they could get
out of you. I went down to the old Whitcomb Hotel, which had been taken
over as headquarters for the evacuation, and went to the colonel in charge
and showed him one of these ads. I said, “How about this? Is it good for
an educational pass?” He said in a deep Southern accent, “It sure as
hell is. It’s education, ain’t it? It’s an art school, ain’t it?
And this other one’s a photo school...We started shoveling people out of
the West Coast on educational passes. To get the money we went to the rich
Jewish people in San Francisco and said, “You may be next"....So we
sent Hazuko to my dearest friend, Harold Mann, in Chicago. He and his
wife, Helen, lived on Goethe Street, just off Clark Street. He was so
shocked by the whole story and so impressed by Hazuko that he went to
Washington, where he knew the man who had been appointed head of the War
Relocation Authority, and he got himself made head of the WRA in the
Middle West. Hazuko stayed with the Manns until she got a good job. As
people arrived with their education passes, he went all around the
neighborhood ringing doorbells asking landladies if they would take a
Japanese-American roomer.” - Kenneth
Rexroth's Autobiography . The Japanese-American population of
Chicago rose from 250 to 20,000 during WWII.
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Mr. Rexroth.
"All
artists have, anyway, is this one little pinpoint of light in the darkness,
the fact that out of all the morass of mediocrity and conformity there is
this small current of communication, not with an audience limited or
confined to a period of time, but an audience which resides solely in
terms of the human spirit... This thing, to me, is all of it." -
K. Rexroth |
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George
and Mary Oppen - in whose circle Mr. Rexroth traveled - spent the first part of the notorious evening (mentioned
above) at OSU
under the famous "trysting tree", which was featured in most
yearbooks. The Trysting Tree Golf Course was, of course, named for the the
tree. Above Left: 1927. Below Left: 1938: "Deserted
by Day but Not by Night". The tree was cut down during Mr.
Strand's tenure, ostensibly due to damage from the
Columbus Day storm (above right: a picture taken at OCE in Monmouth
during the storm in 1962; below right: Albany thunder in the storm.). It's
far from certain that was true. Mr. Strand had ordered searchlights set up
on Benton Hall to discourage students from frequenting the tree in the
evenings. The tactic appears to have been unsuccessful. The 1946 yearbook
makes reference to "necking" under the tree. |
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The Oppens eloped and never returned to OSU:" We
had learned at college that poetry was being written in our own times, and
that in order for us to write it was not necessary for us to ground
ourselves in the academic; the ground we needed was the roads we were
traveling." Like the Paulings and Paul
Robeson, the Oppens' philosophical views were not 'mainstream' and they were
hounded by the government as well. From Corvallis, the two moved to the
Filmore District of San Francisco, in the heart of "Japan Town".
Their poetry was based upon a principle which might have sprung from Mr. Senzaki's
last testament
: "Simply refuse a
poetics based anywhere other than in this present experience."
It would lead to the poetry Pulitzer Prize in 1969. |
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Above
and below, the tree, with the 'sitting stone' remaining in place year to
year year. |
Above:
Monmouth. Below: Albany thunderstorm. Both photos 1962 Columbus Day storm. |
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