PSU Magazine Spring 1994

leve lanJ. Eventually Dean was joined in Ohio by a iste r and two brothers. When a war production plant opened, the siblings went to work turning out fiberglass airplane hangar and prope ller and wing covers. The end of the war meant the end of th job . In fall 194 5, Dean rejo ined her parents and several of the younger children in Hood River. The family came home to chaos. Before the evacuation , they had fo und a Caucasian couple to work the fa rm, allowing them to live rent-free and se ll whatever crops they grew in exchange for maintaining the orcharJs and equipment. But the couple sold the equipment, let the trees grow ragged, and abandoned the fa rm. Workers from other orchards lived in the house fo r several years afterward. When the umoge · reached the farm on her mother's birthday, Dean recalls, "We found broken windows, cherry stains on the wall , rubbish pile in each room, and no furniture." A loca l Japanese American family took the Sumoges in while they began th e arduou task of rebuilding, made more diffi cult by the refusa l of lo al merchants to do busine s with the returning Japanese. Dean faced the challenge of putting her pre-war dreams back toge ther. Her mother, who e fa mily had been doctors fo r ge nerat ions, encouraged her to become a nur e. Dean moved to Ontario to work as a nurse's aide at Holy Rosary Ho pital. There she met her husband , who was twice her patient, once becau e of injuries incu rreJ while being dragged by horses, and aga in because of appendic iti . He wa o impre sed with Dean's kindne s that he proposed and she accepted. The couple had to marry in Washing– ton because O regon banned interrac ial marri ages at th e time. They lived with his moth er in Fruitland, Idaho, for a while, but the relationship quickly became strained. Dean decided a temporary eparat ion might help, so she offered to accompany her younger i ter Mary to college in Portland. While Mary stud ied educa tion at Vanport, Dean babysat and worked as a secretary and at a telephone answe ring IO PSU Magaz ine '' Japanese families sacrificed a lot to send the ir kids to college. My family couldn't even do that. '' service, squeez ing in her own studies at night and on weekends. "!worked like the dickens all the time I was going to school," he says. "Japanese fami lies sacrificed a lot to end their kids to co llege. My family couldn't even do that." Mary's relatively straight shot through chool converged with Dean' ci rcuitous route in June 1956 when the sisters participated in commencement together. Dean was 35 and proud to become an elementary teacher. "My parents looked to me. I wa the one who might amount to something," she says. Her older brothers' education had been thoroughly derailed by the war. After graduation Dean taught in the Portland Public School for 25 yea rs. She had two ons before divorci ng her husband, raising them alone while teaching at Co llin View, Sunnyside, Abernethy, and evera l other Po rtland schools. She ea rn ed a maste r' · degree in 1975 and retired in 198 1. Since then Dean has voraciously continued her education , learning sta ined glass and needl epo int, writing her memoirs and making prints of th e many fami ly photographs she has. Her roomy frame house in southeast Portland is the repository of most of the family history. Dean leaf lovi ngly through album of tiny ye llowing snap ·hors of the umoge clan-a sweet toddler riding a rocking horse, a obe r group of grown- up brothers and sisters, her mother picking fruit. Despite the deva ration of its property during the war, Dean' fam ily was lucky not to lo e its visual records, as many Japanese American fami lies did in World War 11 when they had to leave their home uddenly, taking onl y what th ey could carry. Because she saves everything, Dean wa a fo untain of classic photos fo r the recent ex hibit at the O regon Histori ca l Society ca lled "In This G reat Land of Freedom-the Japanese Pioneers of O regon." rga nized jointly by th e Japane e American National Museum in Los Angele and local Japa nese Americans, the show to ld the stories of Japane e who came to the Un ited States between l 80 and 1924 (when the government passed the National Origins Act reducing the Japane e immigrat ion quota to zero). "It wa · th I ei (Japanese who emigrated to the U.S. after 1907) who suffered most," ·ays exhibit coordinator George Katagiri. "We are the benefactors of their suffering." The ex hibit's chronology ends at 1952 when the ls ei were allowed to become citizen . From Portland the exhibit went to Ontario and Boise. In add iti on to donating photos for the ex hibit, Dean acted as a hostess. "Her outgo ing nature generated a lot of interest among the visitors," Katagiri ·ay . " he put her heart and ou l in to the project." Dean st ill exudes the indefatigable zest that propelled her through a life– time of challenges. And even though he" been a thoroughly mode rn , indepenJ ent woman most of her life, he till honor her parents daily, carrying their images in a plastic clip on her keychain. On one ide are the photographs that persuadeJ her parent to marry each other, her mother so lemn and refined in a rich but subdu ed kimono, her father in a well-cut American business ·uit and sporting a thick mustache of near– handlebar proportion . O n the other side is a snapshot of the coupl e late in their lives, a typical American anni ve rsa ry pose. Their lined faces revea l a transcendent ca lm, in contrast to their daughter's overflowing energy. " I' ve had an interest ing life," Dean says chee1{u ll y. "At the time I was go ing through it, I didn't rea lize it was hard." 0 (Valerie Brown, a Pordand freelance writer, is a frequent contributor to P U Magaz ine.)