Town opened doors for war's outcasts
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The annual crab feed has drawn a largely Japanese-American crowd to the Four Rivers Cultural Center.
Tonight's guests — even the building itself — are intimately connected to a little-known chapter of World War II history, a moment in time when racial tolerance and acceptance were sorely tested in this tiny farm town.
It was 60 years ago this week that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066, setting in motion an unprecedented roundup of Japanese Americans and those of Japanese descent.
But Ontario, just a speck on the Oregon-Idaho border, chose to snub fear and gamble on strangers.
At the beginning of the war, 134 people of Japanese ancestry lived in Ontario and surrounding Malheur County. At its close, the farming community had invited and recruited 1,000 Japanese Americans. Many stayed and built new lives.
Exactly why the migration to tiny Ontario occurred, whether driven by economics, morals or a more subtle combination of the two, is unclear.
Maybe it's just that farming communities, as one local theorizes, are different from big-city towns. Perhaps people here just felt it was the right thing to do.
Internment, then freedom
George Iseri was a young newlywed when he arrived in Ontario with that first wave of Japanese Americans. Now at 81, his voice has grown raspy. The local businessman, who favors bolo ties, is Ontario's unofficial historian. One wall in his office is devoted to newspaper clippings, photos and letters.
"There was really no reason for people to be nice to us," he says. "But they were."
The Iseri family, like thousands of other Japanese Americans on the West Coast, was swept up in fear. An estimated 120,000 people, mostly Japanese and Americans of Japanese ancestry, were forbidden to remain on the West Coast after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Within months, they were corralled into the tar-papered internment camps across the West.
Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942. California and Western Washington and Oregon — basically everything west of the Cascades — were forbidden zones to those of Japanese descent.
But areas of eastern Oregon and Washington, considered minor and remote, were "free zones." Clusters of Japanese Americans already living there were allowed to stay, and for a time Japanese living closer to the coast could voluntarily relocate to these areas. Most, though, did not.
The Iseri family — mother and father, George and 11 siblings — lived in Thomas, a small farming community in South King County. One-quarter of the population was Japanese.
In the early years of war, the Iseri family was interned at Idaho's Minidoka and California's Tule Lake camps. One son, Mike, fought in the famed 442nd U.S. Army Regimental Combat Team and died in battle. The eldest son, Tom, was a businessman and knew someone at a California celery-packing plant — a connection that would later prove invaluable to the family.
When war was declared, all available manpower went to the country's defense, emptying Malheur County of its farmhands and leaving thousands of acres of sugar beets, onions and potatoes unharvested.
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By late that year, Japanese Americans were also allowed to leave the internment camps to take farm jobs provided they had proof of sponsorship.
With his celery-plant connection, Tom Iseri was able to leave Minidoka for a job in Weiser, Idaho. He then secured jobs for the rest of his family, which subsequently led to their early release, and helped find employment for other internees as well.
Weiser was OK, but there was some hostility, George Iseri says, recalling a time he was chased by a monkey-wrench wielding shopkeeper.
By then, word had spread through the Japanese-American community that nearby Ontario was a more hospitable town.
Under the leadership of Mayor Elmo Smith, who also was publisher of the Eastern Oregon Observer newspaper, Ontario decided early on that it wanted the internees.
"If the Japs, both alien and nationals, are a menace to the Pacific Coast safety unless they are moved inland," said Smith, according to an Associated Press report, "it appears downright cowardly to take any other stand than to put out the call, 'Send them along; we'll cooperate to the fullest possible extent in taking care of them.' "
Just across the Snake River from Ontario, in Payette, Idaho, "No Japs Allowed" signs were hoisted at the town's boundary. But in Ontario, Smith hired Japanese Americans to care for his children. Lee Cables, a local Chevrolet dealer, and Jess Adrian, a real-estate broker, helped the new arrivals settle in.
"Elmo Smith encouraged the community to be compassionate to us, to understand that they needed us," says George Iseri. "He said, 'These people are Americans. They're legal residents. They did nothing wrong.' He just had a lot of common sense."
In the spring of 1943, the Iseri family moved to Ontario. Two brothers worked at the Cables Chevrolet dealership. George Iseri farmed sugar beets and potatoes and then, with the help of Adrian, the real-estate broker, opened a radio and appliance retail shop on Ontario's East Side.
When the war ended, a number of people who left the camps, having heard stories about Ontario, opted to settle here instead of returning to the coast.
By 1950, Malheur County had a larger percentage of Japanese Americans than any other county in Oregon.
Fear and prejudice
Which isn't to say the arrival of hundreds of Japanese into tiny Ontario went perfectly.
"There was a Chinese restaurant and a real-estate office that had a sign that we weren't welcome," says George Iseri. "There was a bowling alley that let us bowl, although it cautioned us against coming into the bar. They were afraid there could be fights."
Joe Saito has been living in Ontario since 1930. He also fought in the 442nd regimental during the war. Upon his return to Ontario, he longed to be a part of the social clubs in town. But the rules prohibited him from joining for several years.
Saito, a longtime onion farmer, eventually became a Mason and a Shriner. One time, though, at a lodge meeting, he spoke out on behalf of U.S. citizenship for Japanese immigrants.
"I was accused of making a political speech," he says. When he passed out a petition, some of the friends he was certain would support the issue did not.
Hugh and Lorraine Lackey, both 77, are fourth-generation Ontarians, the descendants of folks who literally helped build the town: A Lackey constructed two of the brick buildings on Ontario's main street.
"The Japanese at the time had this big Japanese hall," Lorraine Lackey recalls. "We were all a little suspicious."
"We were wondering if they had a radio and if they were talking to the Japanese," Hugh Lackey says.
He continues: "We felt safe, though, that we weren't going to get shelled."
"No," Lorraine Lackey says, correcting her husband. "No, we didn't feel so safe."
Married since 1944, the couple says the Japanese were good farmers, helpful people who never got into any trouble. And they spoke English, Lorraine Lackey points out, which is a lot different, she adds, from the Mexican immigrants who have arrived here in the past decade.
Stories about race relations are often told in the extremes: hate-filled or Pollyannish.
But ask locals who have been here long enough to feel some connection to the place, Asian and white alike, and they'll acknowledge an acceptance, a tolerance, a welcoming of the evacuees. They say this matter-of-factly and without a tone of triumph.
"After the war, I went to my old hometown," says Connie Shimojima, 82, once a truck farmer in South King County. He'd haul his lettuce, peas, cauliflower to Pike Place Market.
"But people there had changed. I said, 'Life is too short for this.' So we said we'd come here and stay."
A farm town changes
In these parts, Ontario has always been a hub. Decades ago, when he was a kid, Hugh Lackey says, the place had a certain popularity because of its pool halls and bars.
These days, Ontario has a community college, the Four Rivers Cultural Center, a hospital, a prison and a Wal-Mart. If teens get their way, it'll have an improved skateboard park.
Locals swear the land still produces some of the best sweet Spanish onions in the country, a reputation nurtured in part by early Japanese farmers.
A tour of Ontario hints at the changes coming.
The Mexican community is growing, though the Japanese-American presence can surely be seen in such things as a Buddhist church and the Ore-Ida Judo Club, which has claimed to be the largest in the United States.
On the East Side of town, where the Iseri retail shop, a photo studio and other Japanese-owned businesses once thrived, only the East Side Cafe still stands. Now there's the Casa Jaramillo and Saddles and Spurs.
Years ago, a trio of community leaders met for coffee at Rusty's Pancake and Steak House, a church-turned restaurant that still has stained-glass windows. They got to wondering: What makes Ontario unique? Their answer: its sizeable Japanese-American community.
They turned to George Iseri to figure out why, says John Kirby, a hardware-store owner.
Dreaming big, the town decided it needed something to commemorate its past and future.
Four Rivers Cultural Center opened in 1994, funded with $4 million from Congress and another $4 million from local fund raising. Initially, its focus was to be the Japanese-American experience. But the town's Japanese-American community wanted it to be inclusive, according to Kirby. The museum now observes the history of the northern Paiute Indians, European pioneers, Basques and Mexicans.
In recent years, Four Rivers has seen high-school class reunions and gatherings of the Ducks Unlimited club and Pheasants Forever chapter. Earlier this month, it hosted the crab feed and auction to benefit the local chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League.
As guests crunched crab and drank pop, they bid on Oregon State T-shirts, gift certificates to a Mexican restaurant, a carving board, and a case of automotive oil. In the kitchen, third- and fourth-generation Japanese Americans tossed salad and handed out cups of ice cream.
The event was a fund-raiser for college scholarships. Like teenagers in small towns everywhere, most Ontario kids see a future far from here.
There just isn't much for them, acknowledges David Murakami, of the well-known Murakami onion family, as the auction got under way and the students bused the tables.
Fewer than 500 people of Japanese ancestry now live in Malheur County. The community is disappearing, Murakami says. Then again, the hope of that first wartime generation was that the children would do better. That this latest generation is moving on, he says, could be regarded as success.