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Tule Lake 

Meanwhile, construction crews worked hastily to complete 10 permanent incarceration camps throughout the country. Near the Oregon-California border, more than 1,600 workers labored 12-hour days, seven days a week, to prepare the largest of these, the Tule Lake War Relocation Center. The first trainloads of new residents began arriving just one month later. 

The Jingujis, after spending several months at Pinedale, were among those sent to the new facility in the high desert of Northern California. A virtual city in the midst of remote, sagebrush-covered farmland, Tule Lake encompassed 7,400 acres and held more than 1,000 army-style barracks. Detainees were paid $12-$19 a month to work in agricultural labor jobs or other positions within the camp. At its peak, Tule Lake housed more than 18,000 people, rivaling the population of nearby Klamath Falls. Surrounded by chain-link and barbed-wire fences, watchtowers, searchlights, and armed guards, it was isolated and inescapable. The Jingujis were assigned to a corner of the camp referred to as “Alaska,” because of its separation from the rest of the barracks by a ditch. Each barracks building held five 20’ x 20’ apartments, furnished with cots, a single light bulb, and a pot-bellied stove for heat during the bitterly cold, snowy winters. The buildings were uninsulated with unfinished walls and ceilings, their exteriors wrapped in tar paper. “We were a family of seven,” Michiko Kiyokawa says. “We were all just in one room.” 

There were men’s and women’s latrines and showers with no doors for privacy, laundry rooms and community mess halls, where “We ate family-style,” she remembers. Her father, once a prominent businessperson, was bussed out to work in the farm fields. 

Although many older detainees, including her parents, felt the strain and frustration of unbearably harsh conditions and being uprooted from their homes and occupations, Michiko Kiyokawa’s 18-year-old eyes viewed the situation differently. “It wasn’t that hard,” she says. “We all did what everybody else did. You just live with it. You don’t even think about it after a while.” 

There were experiences she’d never had before. She hiked the 800-foot bluff rising just beyond the barracks the detainees called “Castle Rock.” She went to work in the office of the Tule Lake WRA Center Information Bulletin, helping to keep fellow detainees abreast of news and activities within the camp. 

And she enjoyed the social aspects this new place afforded her. “I was at an age where meeting all the Japanese was fun,” Michiko Kiyokawa recalls. Many of the people she met were from Hood River, Ore. Among them was a young man in Block 74, in the far opposite corner of the camp. His name was Mamoru Kiyokawa. He had grown up on his family’s fruit orchard in the small town of Dee in the Hood River Valley. After graduating from Hood River High School in 1940, he attended mechanics school in Portland. 

On the morning of May 13, 1942, just as the pink and white blossoms were yielding to the promise of a good year’s crop, more than 400 residents of Japanese descent in the Hood River area—10 percent of the valley’s population— were ordered to gather at the Hood River train depot. While 60 police officers kept guard, they were loaded into railcars—shades drawn, destination undisclosed. Their long journey took them first to Pinedale, and later to the gates of Tule Lake. It was there that 19-year-old Mamoru Kiyokawa made a friend from Tacoma. 

Within the confines of the dreary camp, a romance took root. Black-and-white photographs tell the story of their courtship: A handsome youth with thick, dark hair and a winsome smile, with his arm around his girl, a slender beauty with shoulder-length curls in a pleated skirt and Oxford shoes, beaming for the camera. 

In early 1943, the atmosphere at Tule Lake took a radical turn for the worse. The War Department passed out a “loyalty” questionnaire to adult detainees, to determine their fitness for an all-Nisei combat unit. On the form were two questions that caused a great deal of consternation. They asked detainees if they were willing to serve in the United States Armed Forces, and whether they would swear allegiance to the United States and forswear any loyalty to the emperor of Japan. 

The questions were confusing, and the answers were complicated. Some Issei feared that because they could not become American citizens by law, giving up their Japanese citizenship would render them nationless people. Many were disillusioned and hurt by the way their country had treated them. Those in the 10 incarceration camps who answered “no” to the two questions or left them blank were deemed “disloyal” and were sent to Tule Lake. Ten more blocks of barracks were added to accommodate the influx of 12,000 new detainees, and the camp was converted into a maximum-security segregation center, ruled by martial law. 

As tensions grew and a resistance movement became increasingly bitter, detainees were forced to build their own concrete jail and stockade. At one point, at least 100 prisoners were held in the small, six-cell jail. A battalion of 1,000 military police was brought in, along with a half-dozen tanks, and an eight-foot-tall double fence was constructed around the camp’s perimeter. The number of guard towers increased from six to 28. 

The unrest made constant headlines in The Evening Herald newspaper in Klamath Falls, where some of the protesters were lodged in the county jail. To make room for the incoming “no-nos,” as they were called, thousands of Tule Lake detainees were moved to other camps. The Jinguji family was sent to Heart Mountain Relocation Center near Cody, Wyo. The Kiyokawas were dispatched to the Jerome War Relocation Center in Southeastern Arkansas. In October 1944, Mamoru enlisted in the Army, attending Military Intelligence School at Fort Snelling in St. Paul, Minn. He was among some 33,000 Japanese Americans who served in the U.S. military during World War II. Though parted by circumstances, the young couple found a way they could be together once again. 

“You could leave if you had a job or went to college,” Michiko Kiyokawa explains of her detainment at Heart Mountain. She joined her brother enrolling in Hamline University, just a few miles from Fort Snelling. However, in the middle of her first term, Mamoru Kiyokawa was deployed to Sapporo, Japan, and later to Kochi Prefecture on Shikoku Island. Faced with yet another separation, the sweethearts decided to marry, and on Oct. 12, 1945, in a chapel at Fort Snelling, they became Mr. and Mrs. Kiyokawa. 

After the war and Mamoru Kiyokawa’s honorable discharge, the couple returned to their studies. Michiko Kiyokawa graduated from Hamline in June 1947 with a degree in science, and she and her husband moved with the Jinguji family back to Tacoma, where the Jingujis bought a new home. Eventually, the young couple moved to Portland, then to Eugene, where Mamoru Kiyokawa enrolled as an architectural student at the University of Oregon. Michiko Kiyokawa entered the medical technician program at Sacred Heart Hospital. After a while, though, the orchardist’s son from Dee was itching to rejoin his family and carry on their fruit growing tradition.

Kiyokawa family’s Hood River Valley legacy 

Mamoru Kiyokawa’s father, Riichi, had immigrated in 1905 from Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, to Hawai’i, where he worked on a pineapple plantation. In 1911, he moved to the mainland and began his career in the Hood River Valley. On Independence Day in 1917, he married Rei Kuga from Saga Prefecture, Japan. In exchange for his work clearing trees for a landowner, Riichi and Rei were able to secure their own property. 

When the war ended, the Kiyokawas were more fortunate than most—they were able to return to their farm, which had been tended by others during their absence. 

Now it was Mamoru and Michiko Kiyokawas’ turn to start their own orchard, and they searched for just the right spot. They found it not far from Dee, in a 25-acre parcel near the picturesque town of Parkdale. In 1951, the couple set up their permanent home in the lush valley fed by Hood River and fertilized by ash from Mount Hood’s volcanic past. 

In time, the young family grew, and daughters Connie, Nancy, Margie, and Becky came along, followed by a son, Randy. The orchard grew as well, eventually encompassing 207 acres, with more than 150 varieties of apples, pears, peaches, nectarines, cherries, pluerries, plums, pluots, and table grapes. Randy Kiyokawa took over his father’s orchard in 1987, carrying on the tradition started by his grandfather more than 100 years ago. Father and son had different styles and philosophies, he recalled, which at first caused a few conflicts. 

“Dad’s saying was that 20 years from now, no one will know the difference, which means, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s going to be OK.’ You know, ‘enjoy the moment,’” Randy Kiyokawa explains. “Whereas when I came back, I had more of a type A personality: If it’s a job worth doing, it’s a job worth doing right.” Over time, the elder orchardist began to see the merit of his son’s new ideas. Today, Kiyokawa Family Orchards is a mecca for locals and tourists seeking fresh fruit and U-pick options and offers its popular produce at farmers markets and events throughout Northwestern Oregon.

Michiko Kiyokawa serves as the family historian and orchard advisor. In September 2023, the family came together to help her celebrate a milestone: her 100th birthday. Still spry and energetic, with a cheerful and humorous disposition, she shared her tips for a healthy lifestyle. “I think a person shouldn’t be so sedentary,” she advises. “Exercise is essential.” 

The now 101-year-old Michiko Kiyokawa doesn’t just talk the talk—she sticks to a daily routine that includes 45 sit-ups, 30 push-ups and a walk around the inside of her house (to the crooning of Elvis Presley). “So I keep in shape,” she says. “My heart is strong.” Kiyokawa doesn’t drink or smoke, but she does admit to having one vice: “I’m a chocoholic.” Nestlé Crunch and Hershey’s Krackel bars are her go-to treats, and a part of her everyday regimen. Of course, fruit is a regular part of her life, too. With so much to choose from, what’s her favorite? “I love the canned pears,” she says. 

In the heart of the Hood River Valley, with its sprawling orchards and farms, country roads, mountain vistas, green forests, and rural charm, Kiyokawa has plenty of time and inspiration for reflecting on her long and storied life. As the seasons pass—springtime is her favorite—she watches the changes come and go with eyes that have seen more than a century of triumphs and hardships, gain and loss. In 2008, her husband passed away, leaving behind a family that proudly carries on his dreams. 

And Kiyokawa takes it all in from her warm and cozy home. While once she saw rows and rows of grim black barracks, she now sees colonnades of colorful fruit trees. In place of mystical Castle Rock, she gazes through her windows at the white hightower peaks of Mount Hood, Mount Adams, and Mount Rainier. 

“Loyalty” took on a whole new meaning for the Kiyokawas as their focus turned to family throughout their 63 years of marriage. Grandson Cameron Kiyokawa enjoyed a special bond with his grandparents, having grown up right next door to them at the orchards. “I remember that they would rarely miss my football games, even if it meant listening to the game on the radio from their car in the parking lot,” he recalls. “Grandpa was the social one, and I don’t remember him without a smile or making a joke. He was easygoing, humble, and hardworking. Grandma is more reserved, but is the strongest person I have ever met. Even at 101, she still tries to fuss over me like she did when I was in elementary school. 

“Their selflessness, humility, and resilience has always amazed me as I learn their story through the internment, building the farm, and raising a family,” he adds. “I couldn’t have asked for anything better than those two.”

Kathy Patten is a writer based in Baker City, Ore., and a frequent contributor to The Oregonian.