George Hirahara was 5 years old when he left Japan with his mother to join his father in Washington. At the age of 19, his parents sent him to Japan to wed Koto Inoue in an arranged marriage. The couple returned to the Yakima area, where the family leased a truck farm and managed the Pacific Hotel. A son, Frank, was born in 1926. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Hirahara family was sent to Heart Mountain Internment Center in Wyoming, along with 1,100 others from the Yakima Valley with Japanese heritage. In the camp, George purchased photography equipment and film through mail-order catalogs and built his own underground darkroom from scavenged materials. For the next three years, he and Frank documented life in the camp, taking more than 2,700 photos. After the war, George and Koto moved back to Yakima until 1992, then to Southern California to join Frank, who was working in the aerospace industry. When granddaughter Patti flew to Yakima to help her grandparents pack up their belongings, she discovered 850 negatives in the attic; another 1,200 negatives were uncovered after her father, Frank, died in 2006. In 2010 she donated the images, said to be the largest private collection of photos taken at Heart Mountain, to Washington State University, Frank's alma mater.
A Move to Yakima
In the early 1900s, the Hirahara family immigrated to Washington from Wakayama Prefecture in Japan. The first to arrive in 1907 was Motokichi Hirahara; in 1910 he sent for his wife Sato and their 5-year-old son, George (1905-2000). The family had little grasp of English but was able to eke out a living for the first decade. In 1919 Motokichi leased a 160-acre truck farm in Wapato, which he managed until 1942.
In 1924, Motokichi and Sato sent their son back to Japan, a country he barely remembered. George thought the trip would allow him to meet his Japanese relatives and learn more about his native land, but his parents had other ideas. Unbeknownst to him, his father had arranged a marriage with Koto Inoue, an 18-year-old woman from the same region. Inoue spoke no English but seemed excited about marriage and moving to America. George, however, refused. He promptly wired his father, who responded: "'If you don't get married, you will not be able to return,' since he was still a Japanese citizen. So George and Koto were married in Japan" ("Second Generation"). The couple returned to the U.S. on June 27, 1924.
With George's return, the family took on management of the 60-room Pacific Hotel at 10 1/2 S First Street in Yakima's Japan Town, an area bordered by Yakima Avenue, S First Street, Chestnut Avenue, and Front Street. In the late 1920s, Japan Town was home to about 40 businesses owned by Japanese immigrants and their families. The Hirahara family worked hard, and within two years bought the hotel. They lived upstairs on the second floor; Koto listed her duties as "managing, office clerk, chambermaid, cleaning, bookkeeping and laundering work" ("Few Buildings Remain …"). In 1926 their son Frank (1926-2006) was born. George and Koto were active members of their community and the Yakima Buddhist Church. Trained in judo, George received the rank of shodan, or the first level of black belt, in 1938. Koto enjoyed growing plants and flowers. Their son Frank participated in track and field events at school. All in all, it seemed a pleasant and quiet life in the Yakima Valley – until December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Heart Mountain Internment Camp
On February 19, 1942, amid growing public concern that those with Japanese heritage living on the West Coast posed a national-security threat, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) signed Executive Order 9066. The order set in motion "the expulsion of 110,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast, first into temporary assembly centers and later to 10 inland prison camps in isolated areas of the country. Two thirds of those imprisoned are U.S. citizens. The government will not permit them to return to their communities in Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona until January 1945" ("President Franklin Roosevelt Signs …").
In spring 1942, with only a few weeks' notice, Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans from the Yakima Valley were ordered to take only what they could carry and get ready to relocate. Among the items forbidden were cameras. The families were sent first to the Portland Assembly Center in Portland, Oregon, and then to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming, 12 miles west of Cody. The nearly 1,000-mile train trip from Portland to Wyoming took three to four days. Once there, families were assigned one or more rooms in simple barracks. George and his family were housed in Apartment 15-9-A; his parents, Motokichi and Sato, were lodged in separate quarters. Furnishings were meager: coal stove, cots, blankets, bucket, and broom. The self-contained camp had its own water supply, hospital, post office, court system, and fire department. There were mess halls and communal laundry rooms, and everything was secured within barbed-wire fences overseen by nine guard towers manned by military police with high-beam searchlights.
In all, the 46,000-acre camp at Heart Mountain was home to about 11,000 Japanese Americans, making it the third largest settlement in Wyoming. Approximately 1,100 of those incarcerated were from the Yakima Valley. Also on-site were 200 administrative employees, 124 soldiers, and 3 officers. The incarcerees did the best they could to duplicate a normal life: There were craft and hobby clubs, movies, Boy Scout outings, and an elementary and high school. But restrictions were still in place – for example, camp residents were not allowed to practice their religion or participate in some cultural activities, such as Kabuki Theater.
Bearing Witness
Under supervision, George worked several jobs inside and outside the camp to earn money, and then bought goods through mail-order catalogs that he could not get otherwise. The camera ban was lifted in 1943. Once that happened, he started to purchase photography equipment and supplies from Sears, Roebuck, and Co. as well as from Montgomery Ward. With their new gear, father and son began documenting camp life – festivals and funerals, school life, and sports. They took many landscape images, recording their family trips and outings to spots like Yellowstone National Park. To develop and print the photos, they carved out a small room in a basement-like space partially under their barracks. In 2019, granddaughter Patti Hirahara recounted how her
"grandfather built a secret photographic darkroom and mini-photo studio. They were at the end of the barracks and had four feet of clearance on their end. My grandfather just had to dig another two feet and they'd have six feet. At night, people would take scraps, wood, whatever … Since technically he was a Japanese national, he wasn't allowed to have access to or take pictures. But he decided to do it even though it was prohibited. Some of his friends had darkrooms, but they were not built to the sophistication of the Hirahara darkroom" (Rutledge).
Although George was forbidden to possess a camera, his son Frank, born in Yakima, was an American citizen so the rules were different. As a teenager, Frank was interested in documenting his classmates, school, and sports activities, which gave the father-son photo collection additional depth.
"A considerable portion of the collection depicts high school life in Heart Mountain. As photo editor and photographer for the 1944 Heart Mountain High School Tempo annual, Frank Hirahara took hundreds of photos for use in the annual. Frank Hirahara was elected ASB [Associated Student Body] Commissioner of General Activities, in the Spring of 1944, which provided him a unique vantage point in coordinating student activities and an opportunity to capture a behind the scenes look at the 1943-1944 academic year at Heart Mountain High School" ("George and Frank C. Hirahara Photograph Collection, 1943-1945").
Returning Home: George Hirahara
Japanese prisoners started leaving Heart Mountain in early 1945, each given a train ticket and $25 in cash. The camp was closed on November 10, 1945. The Hirahara family was among the first to leave and returned to Yakima, but only about one-third of Yakima families decided to return home after the war. Many relocated to Seattle or to other parts of the country. "For many of the immigrants taken from the Lower Yakima Valley, they had nothing to return to. The farms, businesses and homes they established had been sold to other parties, leaving them with nothing" (D'Anella).
Driving a used Buick purchased with money he had earned at the camp, George moved his family back to Yakima along with the 2,700 photos taken between 1943 and 1945. (His father Motokichi had died in Wyoming in February 1945 and was later buried in Yakima.) After the camp, George spent the next 58 years in Yakima, where he enjoyed rebuilding two-cycle gas engines and exhibiting them at fairs. He was a charter member of the Central Washington Antique Farm Equipment Club and also belonged to the national Early Day Gas Engine and Tractor Association. Despite the indignities he suffered, he "had no bad feelings about what happened to his family during the incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans during WWII. He felt America was his home, and in 1954 he became an American citizen" ("Second Generation").
George sold his farm in Wapato, retired early, and with Koto began to travel around the country sightseeing in their RV. He also volunteered with various Japanese community projects and was always available to welcome businessmen from Japan who visited Yakima. In 1987 George was selected grand marshal at the Washington State Pioneer Power Show, and the following year was named a pioneer of the Central Washington State Fair. He and Koto remained in Yakima until 1992, when they moved to Southern California to be near Frank, who had relocated there for work in 1955.
In preparation for the move, Frank's daughter Patti traveled to Yakima to help her grandparents pack up. She described what happened next:
"I only had three days. I had the whole run of the house, and my grandfather said there are some things in the attic, so I went up there and found a little blue box that said 'Heart Mountain' on it. I opened it up, and there 850 photo negatives. I always knew we had photos … But he never told me how many we had. My father passed away in 2006 and in 2010, I found another 1,200 more negatives in his home [They were] in a closet, but it was well-preserved in a case" (Rutledge).
Koto died in 1999 at the age of 92, George died the following year at age 94. Although they lived out their last few years in California, the couple was buried at Tahoma Cemetery in Yakima next to Motokichi and his wife Sato, who had died in 1992. "The Japanese pioneers who came to Yakima felt it was important to be remembered, so they bought a plot of land at the Tahoma Cemetery so that they would have a place to be buried" (Rutledge).
Returning Home: Frank Hirahara
While still incarcerated, Frank entered Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, where he lettered in freshman track, was elected to the WSU Athletic Council, and became junior manager of the track team. He graduated in 1948 with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and worked for six years as a design and project engineer at the Department of the Interior's Bonneville Power Administration in Portland.
The aerospace boom created job opportunities in Southern California around this time, and Frank moved to Anaheim in 1955. He worked for Rockwell International on the Apollo, Skylab, space shuttle, and Star Wars programs, retiring in 1988. Photography remained one of his lifelong interests, and he was a member of the Photographic Society of America, Oregon Camera Club, and Portland Photographic Society. Friendly and upbeat, he was named Suburban Optimist of the Year several times by the Suburban Optimist Club in Buena Park, California, and he was president of the club in 1995-1996. He also served as a board member of the Anaheim Memorial Medical Foundation and was a charter member of the Anaheim Family YMCA Heritage Club. He died on February 7, 2006, at the age of 79, leaving behind his wife Mary and their only child, Patti, a journalist and photographer who at one time ran a photo business with her father.
Hirahara Family Photo Collection
After her father died, Patti Hirahara dedicated herself to telling the Japanese American story, especially the World War II years. With the extensive photo collection her father and grandfather left behind, she created the George and Frank C. Hirahara Photo Collection, a digital archive containing 2,712 photographs, thought to be the largest private collection of photos taken at Heart Mountain. The collection also includes documents, items, and ephemera from the camp.
With such a wealth of images and artifacts, she donated photo collections to five different locations on the West Coast: Anaheim Public Library Heritage Center in California; Washington State University and Yakima Valley Museum in Washington; Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center and Oregon Historical Society, both in Portland. The quality of the work astounded archivists. "Trevor Bond, head of WSU's Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, said the photos are remarkable. 'The sharp quality of the images will allow researchers to examine minute details in the photographs, such as the food on the table or the crops grown in the Heart Mountain compound'" (Geranios).
After receiving the collection in 2010, WSU applied for and was awarded a grant for more than $49,000 from the National Park Service to digitize the images and create an online exhibit. A second grant of $77,769 helped the university create curriculum materials and other resources. The Hirahara photos have been used in at least five documentaries about the Japanese internment and were part of a 2012 musical, "Allegiance," staged at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. The Yakima Valley Museum curated an exhibit, "Land of Joy and Sorrow – the Japanese Pioneers of the Yakima Valley," in 2010, and in 2014 the photos formed the basis of an Emmy Award-winning documentary called Witness: The Legacy of Heart Mountain, produced by ABC-7, Los Angeles.
Patti Hirahara also donated family artifacts, including cameras, equipment, and the softball used by George at the camp, which was part of a 2015 exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. She has spoken extensively about her family history, including a 2017 speech at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum. In 2018, she received an honorary alumna award from WSU, her father's alma mater, becoming the first Japanese American to receive the award since its inception in 1966.
