This Small Portland Museum Is Keeping Oregon’s Japanese History Alive

How one independent institution is fighting a community’s erasure.

Wander around downtown Portland now, and it’s hard to see how this stretch of blocks just west of the Willamette River was once a thriving Japantown. A few hints remain—a collection of riverfront cherry blossom trees, subtle historical markers, and a handful of buildings that have been able to evade demolition.

This relatively quiet neighborhood goes by Old Town Chinatown now, but from the late 1800s until 1942 it was Nihomashi, or Japantown. Thousands of Japanese immigrants stopped here en route to jobs on farms and railroads in the Pacific Northwest. The boarding houses they called home, the shops that sustained their daily needs, and the schools that educated their children are gone, but the Japanese American Museum of Oregon is working to keep their stories alive.

Since 2021, this small independent museum has been introducing visitors to the Japanese Oregonians who were forced to leave their community by executive order in 1942, about six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It chronicles the stories of families forced out with only what they could carry as people of Japanese descent—including U.S. citizens—were ordered to report to concentration camps across the country on about a week’s notice.  

“This is the story of what mass incarceration did to the community,” said Hanako Wakatsuki-Chong, Executive Director of the Japanese Museum of Oregon. Previous generations of Wakatsuki-Chong’s own family, including her great-grandfather, were among the incarcerated. It was a piece of their history the family didn’t speak about openly, something that drove Wakatsuki-Chong toward a career in historic preservation.  

“We want to make sure that we are seen and our stories are told, so they’re not forgotten,” she said.

A Century of Portland History  

In the 1920s, Portland’s was the largest Japantown in Oregon. More than 100 businesses lined these streets, selling food and supplies and medical, financial, and legal services to thousands of Japanese immigrants. Like many other American Japantowns, it became a ghost town in 1942.

 Japanese grocers closed their doors alongside dentists, doctors, restaurants, hotels, and laundries. Bill Naito’s family, which operated a curio shop, fled to another state to avoid incarceration. Naito and his brother Sam eventually returned to Portland, generating fortunes through import-export businesses and real estate, and acquiring property that would allow the museum to make a home for itself within the boundaries of historic Japantown.  

The museum is among the few physical hints of that era that remain here. Many of the historic buildings that used to welcome Japanese immigrants and accommodate their growing families have been torn down, with the century-old Yamaguchi Hotel becoming the latest victim of demolition in 2023.

While it isn’t housed in a historical building, the museum’s offices are next door to a building that was once a Japanese language school. “We’re the only Japanese-American institution within the boundaries of historic Japantown,” Wakatsuki-Chong said.

Before this neighborhood became a Japantown, it was a Chinatown, an identity it would reclaim after 1942. Internment as well as immigration restrictions—first on people from China in the late 1800s and then on people from Japan in the mid-1920s—drove the demographic changes here.

Today, this sparsely populated section of downtown is home to the first Voodoo Doughnut shop in the U.S., a few independent coffee shops, and one of the most authentic traditional Chinese gardens outside of China. The Lan Su Chinese Garden opened in 2000 and spans an entire city block.

Reflections on Injustice and Resilience

Inside the museum, curators have created an experience that spans decades of history and a spectrum of emotions. See the stuffed elephant Joyce Kikkawa carried with her as a child headed to the Portland Assembly Center, a stockyard converted into a temporary shelter, and eventually the Minidoka concentration camp.

See the tiny cell where Minoru Yasui, Oregon’s first Japanese-American attorney, was jailed for mounting a legal challenge to a curfew imposed on Japanese Americans. Yasui was held in solitary confinement in that cell for nine months as his case made its way to the Supreme Court.

Witness day-to-day life in an internment camp through recreated spaces, photographs, and art. Read letters home from Japanese-American soldiers fighting in World War II as their families were incarcerated back in the U.S. Around 33,000 Japanese-Americans served in the U.S. military during World War II.

“These are literally the archives of the community,” said Erin Schmith, the museum’s marketing and communications coordinator.

These items are treated with great care, especially when it comes to the terminology used to talk about them. For example, Instead of using the terms internment and evacuation as the U.S. government did during World War II, the museum uses the words forced removal and incarceration. “We are accountable to the people whose stories we are telling,” Schmith said.

The museum’s newest exhibit is a collection of more than 1,000 paper cranes made by local artists and high school students, many of whom are Japanese American Portlanders. “We are still here and part of the community,” Wakatsuki-Chong said. “We’re part of this intricate fabric that makes up Oregon.” 

What to Expect When You Visit

The Japanese Museum of Oregon is small. You can have a meaningful experience in as little as 30 minutes or spend two hours reading everything and engaging with interactive exhibits.

Adult admission is $8, and children under 11 visit for free. The museum store is an especially good place to shop for crafts made by local artists and is more affordable than you might expect.

Combine your museum visit with a stroll through the Japanese-American Historical Plaza in Tom McCall Waterfront Park to see the 13 stone sculptures that depict the injustices people of Japanese descent were forced to endure in Oregon during World War II. Each spring, a collection of Akebono cherry blossom trees come to life along the riverfront walkway.

If you’ve got more time, add a stop at the serene Portland Japanese Garden about a 15-minute drive, or a half-hour bus ride, away. Or walk a few blocks to the Lan Su Chinese Garden.

Before You Go

Before you land in Portland, visit the Japanese American Museum of Oregon’s online tour of historic Japantown. This map-based guide, created in partnership with the Architectural Heritage Center, highlights the long-gone buildings, businesses, and community centers that once stood here and is the best way to see how much local history has been erased.