“Family History II,” by Katie Yamasaki
Muralist and children’s book author Katie Yamasaki shares on Instagram about her grandfather Minoru Yamasaki’s life in Seattle, Alaska and across the U.S.
“Peak season, he said, consisted of 124 hour work weeks. He didn’t want to work there. It was just the only place hiring Nisei.”
This is a photo of my grandfather’s family taken around 1918 in Seattle. My grandfather, Minoru Yamasaki (bottom left), was born and raised in Seattle to Japanese immigrants. His father, always dressed at a 10, worked stocking shoes in the back of a shoe store, never allowed to be on the floor with the customers. On weekends, he would bring my grandfather along to his second job, and they would clean the floors of a chocolate factory.
My grandfather excelled in school, but there was no money for college. So he, like many Nisei young men who were unable to get jobs elsewhere, worked summers at Salmon canneries in Alaska where, in the 1920s, conditions were deplorable at best, life-threatening at worst. Peak season, he said, consisted of 124 hour work weeks. He didn’t want to work there. It was just the only place hiring Nisei.
He was a rising architect at the onset of WWII, actually working to design a Naval Base in upstate New York. With luck, he was able to rush his parents from Seattle to live with him, my grandmother and great uncle Ken (the one in the best baby jacket e I’ve ever seen) in their 1 bedroom apartment in NYC for the duration of the war, avoiding the “camps”.
“But as I get to know him now…I understand more deeply how the scars of racism pass down through generations.”
“My grandfather was profiled and harassed by the FBI, Army, Navy and NYPD. He was harassed by people on the street and in the subway.”
My grandfather was profiled and harassed by the FBI, Army, Navy and NYPD. He was harassed by people on the street and in the subway. As I am reading through his writings, that he compiled towards the end of his life, he wrote more about racism and the abuse he and the other Nisei men endured in Alaska than he did about anything else besides architecture. Again, like in the post about my grandmother, this is barely scratching the surface of his story and the story of his family. But as I get to know him now, in this way through his work and his writing, as I know so intimately my entire living family, I understand more deeply how the scars of racism pass down through generations. How these traumas become intergenerational. Especially when it feels like we continue to live through the worst kind of groundhog day.
#JapaneseAmerican #immigrants #AsianAmerican #AsianAmerican #StopAsianHate #StopAAPIhate #familyhistory #LosAngeles #FamilyPortrait #FamilyHistory #MinoruYamasaki #JapaneseAmericanHistory #SorryPETA
Katie Yamasaki works primarily as a muralist and picture book creator. She has painted more than eighty murals around the world, and her most recent book is Everything Naomi Loved. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their daughter.
Reposted with permission.
