Tsubota
In his book Shirakawa, author Stan Flewelling recounts the story of how Sentaro Tsubota first decided to immigrate to the United States. As their only son, his parents had denied him permission to come to America, despite favorable reports from several friends who had already settled in the Pacific Northwest. Sentaro and his wife Fusano would have to do their best to remain contented with their lives in Japan.
In 1902, however, the couple’s young baby Sennozyo passed away. In the wake of this personal tragedy, Sentaro announced to his family that he would be taking a trip from the family’s home in Hiroshima-ken to Tokyo. Flewelling reports that, “He [Sentaro] boarded a train and got as far as the port city of Yokohama. The next time Fusano Tsubota heard from her husband, he wrote to say he was in Seattle in the United States and would be back in three years.”
History did not record the astonishment that Sentaro’s parents must have felt at this blatant disobedience, or their further astonishment when Sentaro failed to return to Japan as promised after his three-year absence. Instead, Sentaro sent for Fusano in 1906, and the couple moved from Seattle to Kent, where they opened a general store a few short years later. By 1911, Sentaro added a second business—he built a saw mill just off of the West Valley Highway.
These entrepreneurial pursuits set the Tsubotas apart from many of their countrymen, most of whom were forced to make their way in their new country as truck farmers or low-paid laborers. Perhaps Sentaro was not so alienated from his rather well-to-do parents that they declined to help him finance his business endeavors in the United States.
In addition to heading two successful businesses and a growing family, the Tsubotas also fully participated in the Valley’s Japanese social scene. By the 1930’s, many Issei, including Sentaro and Fusano, were engaged in teaching traditional Japanese dance and theatre to the younger generations. Flewelling reports that the Tsubotas were talented theatrical artists. “Mrs. Tsubota taught dance and played the shamisen, a three-stringed instrument resembling a banjo. Mr. Tsubota’s gift was acting.”
But the Tsubotas’ lives were not without trials. In 1921, Washington’s Alien Land Law took effect, denying Issei Japanese the ability to own or even lease land in their own names. How this impacted the Tsubotas’ businesses we cannot know for sure, but it is interesting to note that in the 1920 Federal Census, Sentaro Tsubota’s occupation was listed as mill owner; by the time of the 1930 Census, he was listed as simply a farmer.
Other more personal tragedies afflicted the family as well. In 1922, the Tsubotas lost their young daughter Shizuko at age 9. Almost a decade later, a string of deaths rocked the family. First, in 1930, son Masayoshi died at age 14. A year later Sentaro himself passed away, leaving Fusano to support their large family at the height of the Great Depression. Finally, in 1933, 18-year-old daughter Yachiyo Rose Tsubota passed away just as she was becoming an adult in her own right; the Kent newspaper reported that Yachiyo was buried in the Japanese cemetery at Christopher. Fusano’s grief during these years must have been overwhelming.
In the coming years, Fusano’s household grew smaller and smaller. Several of her surviving children married and began families of their own during this time. Her youngest child Minoru enlisted in the U.S. Army in early 1941, just as the Second World War was getting underway. By the time Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December of that year, Minoru was already a member of the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team. He participated in campaigns in Italy and France, and was among the first Americans to arrive at Germany’s Dachau Concentration Camp and help liberate its Jewish inmates.
Ironically, as Minoru was earning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his exceptional military service, his mother languished in one of America’s own concentration camps (as President Roosevelt initially referred to the Japanese internment centers). She had been sent to Idaho’s remote Minidoka Internment Camp where she remained until the end of the War.
After the closure of the internment centers, it appears that Fusano never returned to Washington. Although Minoru and his family eventually settled back in Seattle, Fusano and several of her other children instead settled in Ontario, Oregon—a city that welcomed the Japanese who had been unjustly imprisoned just across the border in Idaho. When Fusano died there in 1977, her family buried her in Ontario’s Evergreen Cemetery, erecting a stone to her memory that also lists the baby she lost in Japan, as well as the family members who died in Washington State years before World War II.
The Tsubota monument in the Evergreen Cemetery in
Ontario, Oregon. This marker evidently marks the grave of
Fusano Tsubota and serves as a cenotaph for
other family members.
Photo by Cheryl Hanson; used with permission.
Because daughter Yachiyo’s obituary states that she was buried in the Japanese cemetery in Christopher (Auburn Pioneer, in other words), it’s probable that she and the other relatives who died in Washington State all share the same, unmarked plot in the cemetery there. The marker in the Ontario cemetery likely marks the place of Fusano’s inurnment and serves as a cenotaph for the other deceased family members.