When walking through the first floor entrance of Naito Center on 411 NE Flanders St. in Portland, Oregon, visitors will find the brand new location of the Japanese American Museum of Oregon (JAMO).
Past the gift shop in the lobby lies the front desk, where friendly volunteers sell admission tickets and explain the museum’s offerings. This often includes a temporary exhibit giving an in-depth look into an aspect of Nikkei (Americans of Japanese descent) history, or a display of work done by local Japanese American artists.
At the back of the museum is JAMO’s permanent exhibit, “Oregon’s Nikkei: An American Story of Resilience.” Historic items donated by the local community, pictures, advertisements and professionally-constructed vignettes can be found within the exhibit, artfully telling the story of Oregon’s Japanese Americans from the time they arrived in the U.S.
However, JAMO didn’t always look this way. Until January of 2020, the museum had been known as the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center (ONLC) located within the merchant hotel.
JAMO states its collections and archives remain the “largest repository of Japanese American history in Oregon,” providing educational events, classroom visits and curriculum plans to people beyond the walls of Naito Center.
Moreover, JAMO’s previous director, Lyn Fuchigami-Parks, describes the museum as “(The Japanese Americans’) place: A place where our history, experiences and lives are acknowledged and appreciated. It is a place where we ‘see’ ourselves and can celebrate our contributions, community and culture.”
These values and strong sense of community extend all the way back to the Issei, the first generation of Japanese American immigrants, who arrived in Oregon between the late 1800s to early 1900s in search of a better life.
As the Issei began to start families, many opened businesses, buying and renting storefronts in what is now known as Old Town. Those ten square blocks that housed over 100 Nikkei-owned businesses quickly earned the name Nihonmachi, or Japantown.
JAMO’s current president, Connie Masuoka, says, “It had hotels, it had dry cleaners, it had jewelers, it had doctors, dentists, barbers and restaurants. (Nihonmachi) was a fully-functioning little city.”
The residents were living the American dream, all while preserving the culture this country so desperately wanted them to leave behind.
Because Old Town is located near Union Station, Nihonmachi was often the first thing that greeted new Portland residents when they exited the train. “We were the welcoming committee for any immigrant that came through… so we have ties to all these people,” Masuoka says, referring to the once diverse makeup of Old Town consisting of not only Japanese immigrants, but also African Americans, Greeks, Norwegians and Jewish people.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 into law, unjustly interning more than 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Due to the forced evacuations, families were dragged away from their businesses with no way to preserve them. Nihonmachi was decimated and the legacy of the Japanese Americans who lived there was forgotten.
Forty-eight years later, the sakura-lined Japanese American Historical Plaza was built along the Old Town waterfront. It was among the stones, poetry and artwork representing the injustices Japanese Americans faced at the hands of the U.S. government that Masuoka said people realized, “(The memorial) shouldn’t just sit there as a nice park. Somebody should interpret it.”
In 1998, the ONLC was built solely through volunteer construction and donations with the mission to do just that: preserve and honor the history of Japanese Americans in the Pacific Northwest.
Its location in the Merchant Hotel, a building that had previously housed Nikkei-owned businesses in Nihonmachi, tied into the center’s goal of restoring the community that had lost its foundation and become fractured after the war.
In 2020, the ONLC changed its name to JAMO, and, in 2021, the museum moved to its new location in Naito Center.
When walking through the new building, a hidden history of the state’s past is unveiled through the legacy of Oregon’s Nikkei. Masuoka urges people to remember, “we’re not talking about being Japanese, we’re talking about Japanese Americans. That’s its own culture, its own history.”
Today, JAMO is working closely with other Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) organizations such as the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon and Oregon Rises Above Hate. Together they are finding new ways to preserve Oregon’s rich Asian American history and culture as older generations begin to pass on.
