I remember the tiny market on Denver and Lombard that the Okazaki’s had. They were relocated when the war started, or shortly after. When the war was over they came back to the neighborhood. They were hard workers.
Muriel Kirker Shelb, born 1928, Kenton History

In the store where Baxters used to be was a Japanese family who ran a grocery store. During the war they were interned. It was the Atlantic Cash Grocery. After the war he had the cleaners up on Jordan and Lombard. His sister owned a grocery on Fiske and Lombard.
David Schatz, born 1924, Kenton History

Like other emigrants, the possibility of a better life, brought many Japanese to Oregon during the first decades of the twentieth century. By 1940, nearly 1,700 Japanese residents lived in Portland. Japanese truck farms thrived in the Portland area, and fruit and vegetable stands dotted Columbia Boulevard. Many Japanese families farmed on the fertile lands of the Slough. Some families, like the Nagasakis, owned hog ranches. Others, like the Okazakis of Kenton, leased land on Marine Drive, growing tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, and other vegetables. In 1933, Hidekichi Okazaki opened a fruit and vegetable stand that later became a store at the corner of Denver and Lombard Streets. By 1941, the family began building a home next to the store, and then disaster struck Japanese American families throughout the U.S. West.

• Statistics – Japanese in Portland, 1890-1990
• 1923 Alien Exclusion Law
• Mae Ninomiya discusses farming on the Columbia Slough

Next Page: Survival on the Slough: “Shikata Na Gai”