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Title
Oral history interview with Jim Tsugawa [Sound Recording 01]
Date(s)
- 2018-07-19 (Creation)
Extent
WAV; 01:05:09
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Biographical history
James "Jim" Masao Tsugawa was born in Hillsboro, Oregon, in 1932, the youngest of seven children. His father died the next year. In 1942, the Tsugawa family was among the Japanese-Americans incarcerated by the United States government after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. The government sent his family to the Minidoka War Relocation Camp in Idaho. His mother became ill while they were incarcerated, and he and his siblings were sponsored by a local reverend for residency in Boise, Idaho. His mother died shortly afterward. The family returned to Oregon after the end of World War II and raised strawberries in Ontario. Tsugawa attended Lewis & Clark College on a sports scholarship, but left school to join the U.S. Army. He was stationed in Zweibrücken, Germany, during the Korean War. After his discharge, he attended Oregon State University, earning his undergraduate degree in 1961. He and Amy M. Goda married in 1959 and later had one child. In 1962, he earned a degree in dentistry from the University of Oregon Dental School, now part of Oregon Health & Science University, and became a dentist in Portland.
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Session 1. This oral history interview with Jim Tsugawa was conducted by Sankar Raman and Elizabeth Mehren on July 19, 2018. Amy Tsugawa, Jim Tsugawa's wife, was also present and contributed at the end of the interview. The interview was recorded for The Immigrant Story, an organization that documents and archives the stories of immigrants and refugees in the United States. In this interview, Jim Tsugawa discusses his family background and early life in Portland, Oregon. He describes his experience of being incarcerated by the U.S. government, including his family's detention at the Portland Livestock Pavilion and transfer to the Minidoka War Relocation Camp in Idaho. He also discusses his older brother Henry Tsugawa's military service during World War II. He talks about his family being sponsored by a reverend for residency in Boise, Idaho, and briefly describes his childhood there. He talks about the family renting a strawberry farm in Ontario, Oregon, and his high school experience in Beaverton, Oregon, particularly his interest in sports. He speaks briefly about attending Lewis and Clark College on a sports scholarship, then discusses his experience in the U.S. Army and being stationed in Zweibrücken, Germany, during the Korean War. He talks about studying at Oregon State University after his discharge, and about earning his degree in dentistry from the University of Oregon Dental School, which is now part of Oregon Health and Science University. He then briefly speaks about his marriage to Amy Goda, now Amy Tsugawa, her family background, and her experience of incarceration by the U.S. government during World War II. He discusses the U.S. political climate at the time of the interview in 2018, particularly the Trump administration's immigration policies. Mehren and Tsugawa discuss the large Asian populations in California and Hawaii. Tsugawa describes a recent trip to the Minidoka National Historic Site and revisits the topics of his childhood and playing sports. Amy Tsugawa closes the interview by talking about spending her teenage years in postwar Japan.
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Joint copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society and The Immigrant Story. Use is allowed according to the following statement: In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/.
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- eng
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Name access points
- Raman, Sankar (Contributor)
- Mehren, Elizabeth (Contributor)