THE SETTLEMENT OF THE JAPANESE
IN OREGON
By MARJORIE R. STEARNS
It was a little more than one hundred years ago that the
first Japanese arrived in Oregon. In 1834 a Japanese junk was
washed ashore near Cape Flattery.1 At the direction of Dr. McLoughlin, the three Japanese were rescued from the natives and brought to Fort Vancouver where they were cared for and instructed. They were later taken to England and from there to China. Only a few articles saved from the wreck remained as reminders of that early visitation.
About fifty years later the first Japanese woman arrived here
to make her permanent home. In 1880 a Captain Smith, re
turning from a voyage to Japan, brought with him to Portland
a Japanese girl, Miyo Iwakoshi.2 Six years later L. Takagi came
to Portland from San Francisco and married this woman. Mr. Takagi started a restaurant business here, thus marking the be ginning of Japanese business enterprise in Oregon.3 Four years later there were 25 Japanese in Oregon, twenty of whom were in Multnomah County.4
In the nineties the increase in population was rapid. A few
Japanese had been employed as section hands about 1889, but
it was in 1892 that large numbers were brought in for railroad
labor. A Mr. Dunbar, representing the railroad company, and
Mr. S. Ban, representing the Japanese interests, worked together
in bringing into both Oregon and Idaho large numbers of
laborers from Japan, under contract to work on the railroads
being built.5 By 1900 there were 2,501 Japanese in Oregon, with more than 1,300 listed in Portland and the rest scattered about the state largely according to the railroad needs.6 IR. C. Clark, editorial note "Wreck of a Japanese Junk," The Ore gon Historical Quarterly, 28, (June, 1937), pp. 161-163.
2Statement of Mr. Kozo Miyako, Secretary of the Japanese Association
of Oregon.
zibid. ^United States Census, 1890. 5Mr. Miyako's statement. He also said that most of these men re mained in this state. ^United tates Census, 1900. About 1904 there began a movement of the Japanese towards employment on farms. The Japanese, however, were never an important element in agricultural labor supply, for they early began to operate farms of their own or to work on farms operated by fellow Japanese.7 In 1905, 35% of the Japanese were farmers, 26 % were still employed on the railroads, 10 % were cooks and houseservants, with the remainder working in canneries, or employed as woodchoppers, merchants, and stu dents. At that time only 4%o of the Japanese population were women and children.8
Between 1900 and 1910 the population increase was less than
one thousand9 but the areas where this additional population
was settling were indicative of a new trend in their interests. Less than half of the Japanese population was as yet rural in 1910, but the increasing tendency towards settlement in agri cultural districts was unmistakable.10
It was between 1910 and 1920 that large numbers of Japanese
women arrived in Oregon. Under the system of immigration
which permitted the bringing of "picture brides," during these
ten years the number of women between 20 and 44 increased
from 201 to 769." Within that decade there was a rapid
increase in the number of Japanese children in this state, so
rapid an increase that, together with other causes, there was
considerable agitation directed against the Japanese. The gov
ernor asked Mr. Frank Davey to make a survey of the Japanese
situation in Oregon. His report, made in 1920, gave the
Japanese population of Portland as about 1,800, comprising
merchants, lodging house keepers, hotel and eating house owners,
TH. A. Millis, The Japanese Problem in the United States (New York, 1913), p. 31. However, in 1920 there were 734 Japanese railroad employees in the state. Hood River Glacier, August 13, 1920, p. 3.