Japanese workers lived in segregated camps along the logging railroad.  George Kumazawa  was unusual because he and his wife Tsugi owned their own land and house.   Their children attended  Chapman school and can be seen in the three pictures of the Chapman School student body below.  Their personal stories are quite interesting and depict life of Japanese-Americans during World War II.  The interviews, articles and narrative  on this and subpages are very engaging.   Do you know what a "Picture Bride" was?  Keep reading. 

In 1898, Taijiro Kumazawa, who preferred the name George, came to the United States with his older brother Sogoro.  In 1906, he enrolled in Heald’s College, Oakland, California, to learn English.  In 1916 he was a train porter in Portland, Oregon, and in  1918, he married Tsugi Sugiyama in an arranged marriage, a sort of picture bride from Japan. 

In 1923, he was hired by Clark and Wilson Lumber Company as a section hand for the logging railroad that was laying track into the forest beyond Chapman.  As an inspector, he would check the rail lines and because of his mastery of the English language, give instructions for the repair of the tracks to Japanese immigrant workers who lived in segregated railroad camps.  George purchased 16 acres and had a home near this location where he and Tsugi reared their 8 children, had poultry, kept a cow or two, rabbits, a growing kennel of silver foxes. and had  a large vegetable garden to feed his family and provide produce to the Japanese workers.  George, a Methodist, felt strongly that his children should adopt American culture and gave all of them Christian names; Grace, Joe, Frances, Mary, Josephine, Georgia, George, and Gladys.  The older children attended Chapman school, and had childhood friends in the community.   The creek that ran through their property was a popular swimming hole in the summer and many local children gathered there to join the Kumazawas for a dip.  

On the 4th of March 1935, at age 59, George fell to his death from a trestle.   This tragedy created not only grief for the loss of a father but also some serious cultural challenges for the children, especially the older siblings.  In 1938, urged by her family, Tsugi returned to her home town of Hiratsuka, Japan where she had a house constructed and began the complicated process of introducing her children to a new life where they had to learn Japanese and deal with the attendant suspicions of impending war with the United States.   

The oldest daughter, Grace, opposed the idea of returning to Japan, saying that her father would not want it that way, for he had desired his children to grow up to be "Americans -- without an accent!" She consented to go to Japan as a visitor only.  In 1940,  she returned to Oregon to work and pursue her education.  Soon to follow were her sister Frances and brother Joe.  In the spring of 1942, after being forced to enter the Portland Assembly Center,  the three siblings jumped at the chance to be one of only 129 Oregon Nikkei to escape the fate of the internment camps when volunteers were called to go to a labor camp in Nyssa, Oregon. The work was hard, the heat terrific, the living conditions in the camp uncomfortable, but there were compensations; there was freedom from the barbed-wire enclosure, and there were good wages.  Grace, married and was able to complete college and serve as  chief serologist with the WAC Medical Detachment at Camp Crowder, Missouri.  Younger sister Frances also completed her education and nurses training and joined the WACs to serve as a member of the Medical Detachment also at Camp Crowder.

There was no contact with the family in Japan during the war years.  During that time, they had some difficulties as well. The pension payments ended and the children had to work. The Japanese were watching the family closely because they were American citizens and thought they could be spies.  Hiratsuka was largely destroyed on July 16, 1945, when American bombers hit the city which was the location of aircraft factories, and a possible invasion site.  Fortunately, their home survived.  During the US occupation Mary Kumazawa worked as a telephone operator for the GI Service Center and American Military Calvary.  She returned to the United States in 1948.  Later, her mother returned.

Interview with Grace Giese 2002 Castro Valley Forum 

Grace Giese's father arrived in San Francisco from Japan in 1898 when he was 23.  Working for his room and board, he studied to learn English, learning it so well he graduated from Heald College, Oakland, but found that the only work available to him was farming.

Her mother, on the other hand, didn't leave Japan until after 1919.  "She was more or less a 'picture bride,'" says Giese, who was born the following year.  By then her parents were living in rural Oregon, and Giese and her seven siblings spent their earliest years on the 16 acres of timberland her father bought.

"It was beautiful to grow up there," Giese said, remembering how the ducks paraded down to the creek.  The children liked to play there, too, and to pick wild huckleberries and dewberries for the table.  The nearest neighbors were a mile away, and theirs was the only Japanese family in the area.  She remembers how her father served as midwife in the birth of several brothers and sisters.

Grace helped her mother with canning, gardening and taking care of the chickens.  For a time her father raised silver foxes for their fur, feeding them with raw meat shipped by mail from Portland in packages labeled "Crackerjack."  He was an adventurous man who tried numerous different roles, ending up as a railroad trouble-shooter.

Giese started school at seven, not knowing English, but she doesn't remember having trouble and still communicates with some of those classmates, as well as her teacher, now 92.

Her father died in 1935, and her mother, speaking little English, took young Grace and the other children back to Japan..  Although Giese had started high school, her mother put her in fourth grade in Japan where the younger children called her "denshin banshira," or "beanpole."

A tutor taught her after that, and she quickly completed six grades' work in reading and writing.  Arithmetic as no problem -- numbers don't change.  Giese's mother also taught her how to make a kimono.

Giese was determined to return to the United States, which she did in 1937, working at a Portland hotel for board and room, until graduation from high school.  All along she had mentors who encouraged her to continue her education.

Giese was picking raspberries in the fall of 1940 when  "The dean of women at the University of Oregon came traipsing into the raspberry field to encourage me to enroll."  So she did, completing two years in biological science.  But in February, 1942, Giese recalled, "All Japanese, even native-born, had to leave if they lived within 100 miles of the coast.  It made me know of bitter because I had started working with a professor in genetics."

The Japanese gathered at the Portland assembly center to be dispersed to 10 different internment camps.  They also had a choice of electing critical work, such as farm labor.  "I am not going to any internment camp," Giese told her brother and sister who had also come to America, so the three wound up on the Oregon-Idaho border.  "We picked peaches, we picked corn, we weeded -allsorts of things."

The College of Idaho was nearby and she was accepted there.  "After one year, working for room and board, I decided to move right to the middle of the country where no one could disturb me," she reminisced.  She landed at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where she met her future husband, Ralph Giese, a cadet in flight school there.  Graduating in 1944, she joined the Women's Army Corps, and the WAC recruit was sent to Indianapolis for pre-lab training.

The war was winding down and after VJ Day, married WACs were released.  Giese went to the University of Chicago for graduate work, but left just before her Ph.D. because she was pregnant.  The Gieses' next move was to San Leandro, then Oakland, moving to Castro Valley in 1961, drawn by better schools for their two sons while Giese worked as a lab technician in hospitals.

"It seems like I was always pursuing education," said Giese.  "I still like to learn."  She's currently taking Shakespear through video and learning the organ at Kenneth Aitken Senior Center.  A recent broken arm hampers her finger movement but she is determined.

She's still traveling -- Hong Kong, Thailand, Russia, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Great Britain, Brazil, Costa Rica and of course, Japan.  In 1998 she was thrown from a bucking horse in Belize.  X-rays found nothing wrong with her back, but back home after more X-rays she was told, "Even if you have surgery you may never walk again." "It's been a long haul, but I'm walking, she says today.

Truly non-stoppable, Giese leaves soon for another visit to Japan.

More information about Grace Kumazawa Giese

Picture Brides

In the late 19th century, many Japanese men traveled to USA for work. These men had originally planned to go back home after a few years, however, many men did not make enough money to return.  However, they were permitted to have have family join them.  The process of picture bride marriage was modeled after traditional arranged marriage (called miai kekkon ) .  Picture bride marriage was not much different from these arranged marriage customs, except instead of the man having little role he had no role.  Once the bride's name was entered into her husband's family registry, the marriage was considered official in Japan, and she was eligible for travel documents to the U.S.  However, even though this was sufficient in their home countries, it was not considered a valid form of marriage by the American government.[ Therefore, the picture brides would meet their soon-to-be husbands for the first time and attend a mass wedding ceremony on the docks.  Many of these women were surprised at what they found upon arrival. Most of what the women knew about their husbands before meeting them was based on the photos they had sent. However, the images presented did not always represent the men's real lives. Men would send photos back to Japan that were retouched, old, or of different men completely.  Men often wore borrowed suits and chose to pose with luxury items,that they did not actually own.  Between 1908 and 1920 over 10,000 picture brides arrived on the West Coast of the United States.

The picture bride system was extremely important to the Japanese immigrants during the early 1900’s. It was a system that allowed Japanese men in the United States to find wives from overseas in order to start families. Japanese bachelors would mail their self portraits to a matchmaker in Japan who then matches the picture with other potential brides. Once the matchmaker finds a suitable match, they are married and the bride is sent over on a one-way trip to the United States. Quite often, the only photo that the men had access to were portraits of them when they were much younger. Most often the women in Japan were duped into thinking that their future husband in America is as young as they were in the picture; however this was not the case. The brides later found out as soon as they meet their husband for the first time that they are much older than and not as attractive as they once were. In the portraits the bachelors were young, however in reality they have aged from the laborious work of agriculture and the psychological stress of social marginalization. One would assume that the bride could easily just go back home to Japan but because they lacked the funds for a ride back and also because of their culture, it is important to have pride and “save face” and deal with the circumstances on their own in order to prevent shaming the family. Picture brides gave the Japanese in America social mobility and family formation all due to the enacting of the Gentlemen’s agreement which allowed for Japan to issue passports to the wives in Japan. The picture bride system and the Gentlemen’s agreement were a way to maneuver around the strict anti-immigration laws against Asians. Japan’s goal for the Picture Bride system was to prevent the vices of the bachelor society from manipulating the Japanese and therefore to create a positive image of the Japanese people who are looked upon as the representatives of Japan. The Japanese government wanted the bachelors to find wives and form families and therefore develop a filial piety relationship which composes positive role models for other Japanese. Picture brides became popularized among the Japanese Americans in the United States because it changed the Japanese and Asian image of devious primitive aliens to an image of a low-maintenance model minority group (Shirley Lim). Because the nationhood is place on the bodies of the Japanese, it was absolutely important that their image upheld the nation state as a supreme candidate for social acceptance by the Americans leading to the recognition that Japan is in fact a supreme nation. Family formations along with good citizenship status helped posit the positive image of the Japanese as worthy of being Americans. The Japanese sense of belonging helped motivate them to become model citizens in an effort to gain acceptance by the Americans as well as cultural citizenship.   http://aapcgroup11.blogspot.com/2009/12/picture-brides.html 

Though initially unhappy, most of the picture brides eventually settled into their marriages or just accepted them so they did not shame their families.  Though, there were exceptions to this, and not every marriage worked out.  Some of the picture brides, after seeing their husbands for the first time, rejected them and went back to Japan or Korea.

In the case of the Mr. Kumazawa's "sort of" picture bride,  it wasn't rejection that motivated her to return to Japan, it was death of her husband Taijiro, and concern for their eight children.