Miyo Iwakoshi | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1852 |
| Died | January 19, 1931 (aged 78–79) |
| Resting place | Gresham Pioneer Cemetery, Gresham, Oregon |
| Known for | Being the first Japanese settler in Oregon |
| Spouse | Andrew MacKinnon |
Miyo Iwakoshi was one of the first Japanese settlers in Oregon, arriving in the state in 1880. She became known as the "Western Empress" among Japanese settlers due to her willingness to help Japanese immigrants travel and reside in Oregon. [1]
Evidence is limited on Iwakoshi's youth, but she appears to have come from a financially stable household in northern Japan. [1] She adopted five-year-old Tama Jewel Nitobe prior to her departure from Japan. [2] Nitobe's biological parents are noted as "unknown" on her birth certificate. [1] While in Japan in 1879, Iwakoshi, age 27, met Australian-Scottish professor Captain Andrew MacKinnon, age 53. [3] During this period, the Meiji Restoration of 1868 involved the Japanese government industrializing its agriculture, incentivizing foreigners like McKinnon to travel there and implement new techniques and expertise. [1] At the time, McKinnon was in northern Japan teaching animal husbandry but hoped to travel to the United States. [1] One year later, they set sail for the Oregon Coast. [3]
Iwakoshi arrived to Oregon in 1880 by ship via the Columbia River, setting anchor in Portland. She arrived with her husband Andrew McKinnon, her daughter Tama Nitobe, and her younger brother, Rikichi. [4] [5] After selling their ship, they migrated towards Gresham. [2] [5] They settled down in east Multnomah County, just on the outskirts of Gresham. [6] McKinnon built the Orient Mill and named it after his wife. [7] [8] To build the mill they received some assistance from a friend, Captain Robert Smith. [3] The Orient sawmill helped Iwakoshi and her family survive, and later on served as the name of the surrounding community that formed, Orient. [1] Five years after their start in Oregon, McKinnon died. [1]
Initially, as the first female issei in Oregon, it was challenging having no other women of the same nationality. [2] Many Japanese people at this time faced exclusionary policies and mindsets from the US government. [1] Anti-Japanese sentiment shifted into focus near the end of 1910 as World War I was fast approaching. [7] A Japanese-exclusion movement formed within different communities due to competition in the agriculture world and hatred that formed as WWI began to commence. [7] However, with time more Nikkei came to the farming regions of Gresham and dispersed throughout the area. [9] With the agricultural decline and social unrest in Japan due to the Meiji Restoration of 1868, a large population of issei immigrated to the United States in hopes for employment and new opportunities. [10] [5] During this period, Iwakoshi earned the title of "Western Empress" as she provided resources, contracts, and advice to the incoming Japanese immigrants in the area. [1]
In the spring of 1911, Iwakoshi imported silkworm cocoons from Japan to try and raise them. [11] By June, She had a successful silkworm colony that produced hundreds of yards of fine pure white silk thread. [12] [13] The silk produced was equal in quality to silk made in other countries and she hoped to highlight the possibility of larger-scale silk production in Oregon. [13]
Miyo Iwakoshi died in 1931 at 79 years old. She was provided with no headstone or clear marker as to where she was buried. At the time she died, anti-Japanese sentiment meant she would likely have been buried outside of the Pioneer Cemetery. [14] An anti-Japanese sentiment group within Gresham, the Japanese Exclusion League, desired for any Japanese people to be buried in White Birch Cemetery rather than Pioneer Cemetery. [15] It was assumed that she was buried outside of Pioneer Cemetery or in one of the other cemeteries. After further research, it was later discovered that she was buried close to McKinnon in Pioneer Cemetery, with a Japanese cedar marking her grave. [1] [14] In 1988, the Japanese American Citizens League and the Gresham Historical Society contributed a granite headstone and a planted Japanese maple as an marker of her burial. [14] As of 2021, the trees remain at the site. [15]
Iwakoshi's daughter, Tama Nitobe, married Japanese restaurant business owner Shintaro Takaki in 1891, when she was 16 years old. They became the first Oregon Japanese immigrant family with their six children. [3] [10] By 1973, three of Miyo's grandchildren were deceased; a grandson and granddaughter were shot, and one grandson died in a car accident. [1]
Issei are Japanese immigrants to countries in North America and South America. The term is used mostly by ethnic Japanese. Issei are born in Japan; their children born in the new country are nisei ; and their grandchildren are sansei.
Bombyx mori, commonly known as the domestic silk moth, is a moth species belonging to the family Bombycidae. It is the closest relative of Bombyx mandarina, the wild silk moth. Silkworms are the larvae of silk moths. The silkworm is of particular economic value, being a primary producer of silk. The silkworm's preferred food are the leaves of white mulberry, though they may eat other species of mulberry, and even leaves of other plants like the osage orange. Domestic silk moths are entirely dependent on humans for reproduction, as a result of millennia of selective breeding. Wild silk moths, which are other species of Bombyx, are not as commercially viable in the production of silk.
Gresham is a city in the Willamette Valley, Located in Multnomah County in the U.S. state of Oregon, bordered by Portland to the northwest and partially in the southwest. it was first settled in the early 1850s by the Powell brothers. It remained unincorporated until 1905; it was named after Walter Quintin Gresham, an American Civil War general and United States Secretary of State.
Yuji Ichioka was a Japanese-American historian and civil rights activist, widely regarded as the preeminent scholar of Japanese American history. Ichioka was a pioneer in the field of Asian American Studies and a leading figure in the Asian American movement. Alongside his partner Emma Gee, Ichioka is credited for coining the term "Asian American" and founding the Asian American Political Alliance to help unify different Asian ethnic groups under one shared identity.
Nitobe Inazō was a Japanese agronomist, diplomat, political scientist, politician, and writer. He studied at Sapporo Agricultural College under the influence of its first president William S. Clark and later went to the United States to study agricultural policy. After returning to Japan, he served as a professor at Sapporo Agricultural College, Kyoto Imperial University, and Tokyo Imperial University, and the deputy secretary general of the League of Nations. He also devoted himself to women's education, helping to found the Tsuda Eigaku Juku and serving as the first president of Tokyo Woman's Christian University and president of the Tokyo Women's College of Economics. He was also a strong advocate for Japanese colonialism, and described Korean people as "primitive".
The California Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning agricultural land or possessing long-term leases over it, but permitted leases lasting up to three years. It affected the Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Korean immigrant farmers in California. Implicitly, the law was primarily directed at the Japanese. It passed 35–2 in the State Senate and 72–3 in the State Assembly and was co-written by attorney Francis J. Heney and California state attorney general Ulysses S. Webb at the behest of Governor Hiram Johnson. Japan's Consul General Kametaro Iijima and lawyer Juichi Soyeda lobbied against the law. In a letter to the United States Secretary of State, the Japanese government via the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs called the law "essentially unfair and inconsistent... with the sentiments of amity and good neighborhood which have presided over the relations between the two countries," and noted that Japan felt it was "in disregard of the spirit of the existing treaty between Japan and the United States." The law was meant to discourage immigration from Asia, and to create an inhospitable climate for immigrants already living in California.
Nami, also known as "Cat Burglar" Nami, is a fictional character in the One Piece franchise created by Eiichiro Oda. She is based on Ann and Silk, two characters from Oda's previous manga Romance Dawn. She is introduced as a thief and pickpocket who possesses cartographical, meteorological, and navigational skills. At first, she is a subordinate of the fishman Arlong, until she is eventually freed of this service and permanently joins Monkey D. Luffy.
Henry Winslow Corbett was an American businessman, politician, civic benefactor, and philanthropist in the state of Oregon. A native of Massachusetts, he spent his early life in the East and New York before moving to the Oregon Territory. He was a prominent figure in the early development of Portland, Oregon, and was involved in numerous business ventures there, starting in general merchandise. His interests later included banking, finance, insurance, river shipping, stage lines, railways, telegraph, iron and steel and the erection of Portland downtown buildings among other enterprises. A Republican, he served as a United States senator from 1867 to 1873.
Harvey Whitefield Scott (1838–1910) was an American pioneer who traveled to Oregon in 1852. Scott was a long-time editorialist, and eventual part owner of The Oregonian newspaper. Scott was regarded by his contemporaries as instrumental in bringing the state of Oregon firmly into the political camp of the Republican Party.
People from Japan began emigrating to the U.S. in significant numbers following the political, cultural, and social changes stemming from the 1868 Meiji Restoration. Japanese immigration to the Americas started with immigration to Hawaii in the first year of the Meiji era in 1868.
Gresham Pioneer Cemetery, founded in 1859, lies on the east side of Southwest Walters Road in Gresham, Oregon, United States. The cemetery is bordered by the Springwater Corridor Trail and Johnson Creek on the south and by Escobar Cemetery, adjacent on the west and not clearly separated from Gresham Pioneer Cemetery. White Birch Cemetery, founded in 1888, lies on the west side of Southwest Walters Road across from the other two cemeteries. All are one block west of Gresham's Main City Park and about a half-block south of Southeast Powell Boulevard.
Ruggs is an unincorporated community located in the southern portion of Morrow County, Oregon, United States. Ruggs lies at the junction of Oregon Route 206, Oregon Route 207, Rhea Creek Road, and Upper Rhea Creek Road. The community is situated at an elevation of 2,136 feet (651 m).
Orient, Oregon, is an unincorporated community in Multnomah County, Oregon, United States. The community is centered at SE Orient Drive at 302nd Avenue, near Gresham, which is the rough location of the former Orient Post Office.
Gertrude Bass Warner was an American twentieth-century art collector, with particular interests in Asian art, religious artifacts, daily-life textiles, ceramics, paintings, and photographs. She lived, traveled, and collected art in East Asia from 1904 to 1938. In 1922 she became the curator for life and first director of the University of Oregon Museum of Art at the University of Oregon, helping to design the historic building with famed architect Ellis F. Lawrence. She had the museum built to house the collection of more than 3,700 works of art, the Murray Warner Collection of Oriental Art, named after her late husband, Murray Warner. She donated the collection to the university in 1933. She traveled throughout China, Japan, Korea, and Russia purchasing works of art and artifacts, taking photographs, and writing extensive field notes. She visited thousands of cultural sites and studied Shinto, Buddhism, and Chinese and Japanese etiquette, and the human experience, and became an innovator in the promotion of Asian art and culture appreciation, Asian studies, and multiculturalism. She is considered a female pioneer of museum studies.
The history of Japanese Americans and members of the Japanese diaspora community, known as Nikkei (日系), in the greater Portland, Oregon area dates back to the early 19th century. Large scale immigration began in the 1890s with the growth of the logging and railroad industries in the Pacific Northwest, after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 limited migration of new cheap labor from China and those other areas controlled by the Qing dynasty.
Ida A. Kidder was a pioneering librarian and the first professional librarian at Oregon Agricultural College, now Oregon State University. She was so loved by her students that they nicknamed her “Mother Kidder”.
Birdie Sherman Crooks, known professionally as Cathrine Countiss — often misspelled in media as Catherine Countiss — was an American actress at the beginning of the 20th century. She appeared in multiple Broadway productions, traveling stock companies, vaudeville tours, and silent films, traveling across the United States and portions of Canada during her career that spanned the years 1901 through 1915. She was married three times including to Edward D. Price, who was also her theatrical agent during their time of marriage.
Alonzo Tucker was an African American boxer and owned a gym in Coos Bay, Oregon. He was accused by Mrs. Dennis for assault. After the lynching, Dennis and her family quickly left town and headed to California. Tucker is the only documented lynching of a black man in Oregon.
Eleanor Florence Baldwin (1854-1928) was a Progressive Era radical journalist and pamphleteer who wrote newspaper columns, treatises, and gave pro-suffrage speeches in Portland, Oregon. Baldwin was an advocate for labor rights and women's rights, a “critic of finance capitalism with an abolitionist heritage” who denounced the Catholic Church and once wrote an article for the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan, The Western American.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)