In the year 2001, the Portland Young Women’s Christian Association will celebrate its centennial. As a Capstone student at Portland State University, involved in a community team project, which takes as its task the writing of the YWCA history in the 1940s, I chose to explore the impact of the Japanese-American internment on the YWCA. From May to September 1942, Portland provided, at the Pacific International Livestock Exposition buildings and grounds, in North Portland, an assembly center for the evacuation of 3,554 persons of Japanese ancestry. About 100 of the young Japanese-American women interned there were members of the Portland YWCA in 1942.

As a product of the late twentieth century, I understand confrontation, protest, resistance, and dissent to be "American" ways of interacting when the chips are down. I approached the assignment anticipating that in the 1940s the Portland YWCA leadership would have been incensed by affronts to their community. I knew very little about the history of the Japanese in the United States, and carried few assumptions. As it turns out, I knew little about Portland, Oregon in the 1940s, and carried many false assumptions.

With the initial opportunity to dive into the 1941 and 1942 board of directors’ meeting minutes, I came armed with dates, hoping to find anxious panic and clamoring to protect a threatened community. I looked first at the December 9, 1941 board meeting, two days after Pearl Harbor was bombed -- "too soon to accomplish any change." I looked at the May 12, 1942 board meeting, one week after relocation to the assembly center -- a board member read a report submitted to the National YWCA detailing requests by Japanese Americans for transportation the Center. I searched the September 8, 1942 minutes, the second day of five in which those interned in Portland were relocated to Minidoka Relocation Center in Hunt, Idaho -- the subject of the Japanese-Americans was not on the board’s agenda. Considering my preliminary findings, I began to approach the subject matter from a different angle. I wondered what it meant to be a member of the Portland YWCA community in 1940 and I wondered why Japanese-American women sought a place in that community. I approached our research at the YWCA archives thinking that "community" seemed to be, in the 1940s, and maybe more generally in the twentieth century, a very fragile concept.

The goal of this essay is to contribute to an understanding of what "community" meant to the Portland Young Women’s Christian Association in the 1940s. Although there are many ways this project could be approached, and there were certainly other complex factors that contributed to the making of their community, I have chosen to emphasize, almost exclusively, the impact made by Japanese-American members on the YWCA’s concept of community. My contention is that the most significant impact of the evacuation of approximately 100 Japanese-American members of the Portland YWCA was that it exposed the failure of the organization’s leadership to reckon with what "community" meant to them. My understanding of their history results from our examination of the primary source documents found at the Portland YWCA archives, from contemporary news accounts in the Oregonian and the Oregon Journal, and from historical documents located at Oregon Historical Society by Rose Murdock. Evidently numerous historical documents, which might allow for a more complete interpretation, are missing from the YWCA archives. I am forced to draw conclusions based on what we found, and sometimes the conclusions are tenuous. If nothing else, this paper highlights the need for further excavation of primary source material, as well as the important work of receiving oral histories, before it is too late, from those whose experiences brought them to the Portland YWCA in the 1940s.

This essay begins with a preliminary history of the development of the Portland Japanese community. Marvin Gavin Pursinger wrote, in 1961, "The years from 1924 to 1941 were so singularly free of race baiting that it must have seemed to all Americans that the Japanese of the second and third generations would succeed in their goal of assimilation into the American social complex." Agreeing with Pursinger’s observation that the Japanese in Oregon faced a less hostile environment during these years, I document how Japanese-Americans went to great lengths, as a community, to represent themselves as Americans. These efforts, which often separated them in concrete ways from the immigrant generation, led to their involvement in the associations of the dominant society, including the Portland YWCA.

In the second section, I examine the integration of Japanese-Americans into the YWCA community. I argue here that being invited to participate in YWCA activities was not the same as becoming a part of the YWCA community, and that the leadership of the Portland YWCA had reasons, other than to simply develop a more dynamic community, for reaching out to Japanese-American women.

In a third section, focusing primarily on 1942, I document the YWCA response to what I view as a government imposed threat to their community--the arrest and evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry. I conclude here that although the Portland YWCA initially offered solidarity to their Japanese-American members, the realization that other forces in the dominant society would counter that solidarity led the YWCA to temper their response. I struggle to determine whether their failure to mobilize to protect the YWCA community resulted from their sense of patriotism or from sexual and sexist dynamics of American society that mandated that women’s relationship to men supersede all other community interests.

Although this essay will not focus on it, the story of Japanese-American involvement in the YWCA community does not end there. Unable to abandon hopes of assimilation in the American culture, at the close of the war, Japanese-American women slowly trickle back to a YWCA that welcomes them. How that relationship evolved was not clear at the close of the decade. After posing potential research questions, based on my findings, I leave further analysis to Capstone Students for the 1950s.

Eiichiro Azuma, documenting the development of Japanese American culture in Oregon, stated that, "Mutual support was a new social norm on which the Japanese immigrants built their families, communities, and industries." As early as 1880, the Japanese began to settle and establish business links in Oregon. Initially, Japanese immigrants, the issei, came as laborers to work on Oregon Short Line railroad projects. Newly arriving immigrants reported to Shinzaburo Ban, the most prominent Japanese citizen in Portland at that time. Ban had earned this recognition because of his long-standing reputation for securing jobs for immigrants, and for providing reliable workers to the railroad industry.

The 1907-08 Gentlemen’s Agreement between Japan and the United States forbid further immigration of Japanese men to the United States, but allowed for Japanese women to join men who had already settled. Between 1910 and 1920, the population of Japanese women in Oregon increased dramatically, and subsequently the first generation of Japanese-Americans, the nisei, was born.

Azuma documents changing definitions of gender roles as the Japanese in Oregon established family life and built community,

This sense of mutual support contributed to a network of community institutions which "provided residents with vital administrative, religious, recreational and economic services." By 1928 this network of local associations consolidated as a central body in Portland, known as the Japanese Association of Oregon. The association served as an effective force for deterring individual Japanese immigrants from violating community standards, and successfully represented themselves as spokespersons for the Japanese community by performing administrative, financial and legal activities, on behalf of Japanese, within the dominant society.

In 1920, Portland’s Japanese population, composed of issei and young nisei, was "about 1800 comprising merchants, lodging house keepers, hotel and eating house owners, tailors, dyers, cleaners, factory, and farm hands." Between 1910 and 1930 the Japanese population in Oregon increased from 3,418 to 4,958. A strong wave of anti-Japanese sentiment, on the local and national level, countered the increase in the Japanese population. Responding to political pressure from the American Legion, the Ku Klux Klan and Governor Walter Pierce, the Oregon legislature passed in 1923 the Alien Land Law and the Oregon Alien Business Restriction Law. The Alien Land Law sought to halt the growth of Japanese farming in Oregon by prohibiting land ownership. The Oregon Alien Business Restriction Law prohibited the granting of business licenses to specific types of Japanese businesses and mandated that Japanese businesses post signs indicating Japanese ownership. Many issei circumvented the laws by placing titles in their American-born children’s names. So many in fact, that Pursinger suggests that the primary impact of the laws may have been to sedate anti-Japanese forces in the state. On the federal level, in 1922, the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a law forbidding citizenship to Japanese immigrants. Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which put an end to the Gentlemen’s Agreement by forbidding further immigration of Japanese.

Responding to the xenophobia of influential white Americans, the issei supported efforts of the Portland nisei to organize a branch of the Japanese American Citizens’ League. The JACL was an organization made up of Japanese-American citizens "who have a common desire to live up to the responsibility afforded them by American citizenship." Japanese-Americans of high social position composed the staunchly conservative leadership of the JACL. "Many in the organization felt that the only way to gain acceptance in the United States was to become 100 percent American and to discourage anything that might cast doubt upon their loyalty."

The Oregonian reported, on September 5, 1933, a JACL conference, in Portland, attracted about 300 members,

By 1940, the JACL claimed a west-coast membership of 10,000. The membership levels are astounding. In 1940 there were 4,071 persons of Japanese ancestry in Oregon, of which 1,617 were issei and 2,454 were nisei. The issei and nisei in the United States totaled 126,947. Of these 76,921 were west coast nisei. Accordingly, in 1940 at least one in eight Japanese-Americans were members of the JACL. The membership levels are indicative of the level of influence maintained by the JACL among Japanese-Americans in the 1930s and early 40s. Since American citizenship was a requirement of membership, the membership levels are also indicative of heightened generational division between the issei and the nisei. When William Gray wrote for the Oregonian about the "surprising nature" of the JACL convention in 1940, he stated that, "Here was a racial minority doing the unexpected--intently trying not to be a racial minority. It is a fair indication again to say that the aforementioned newspapermen believed this minority to be utterly sincere."

The historical tradition which fostered community reliance on associations, and the JACL’s encouragement to foster links in dominant society with the goal of assimilation offers a partial explanation of why, beginning around 1936, young Japanese-American women chose to participate in the YWCA. However, two additional explanations merit consideration.

Marilyn Friedman, in examining urban communities as a voluntary phenomenon, suggests that, "The modern self may seek new communities whose norms and relationships stimulate and develop her identity and self understanding more adequately than her unchosen community of origin." Perhaps, the young Japanese-American women chose a community like the Portland YWCA because they were attracted to a female-centered organization that provided "American" activities for girls and young women. A brief examination of the community networks and the leadership opportunities available to Japanese-American women highlights this possibility. The leadership of the JACL was composed almost entirely of men. By 1940, the only female-centered Japanese organization was the Portland Japanese Women’s Society, a cultural organization, hosting tea parties, providing friendship for Japanese issei, and serving shut-ins in Portland homes and hospitals. Some Japanese-American women probably met individual members of the YWCA at places of employment. Japanese churches in Portland included a Methodist church, a Catholic church, an Episcopal church, and 7 Buddhist churches. The Japanese Methodist Church organized a youth council known as the Epworth League, which provided representatives to the Portland Youth Council. Finally, the Japanese Association of Oregon continued to function, which, unlike the JACL served the needs of both issei and nisei providing legal, administrative and financial assistance. The YWCA was unique in the opportunities it could offer to a Japanese-American woman seeking to be part of an "American" community.

Gray’s article, covering the 1940 JACL convention, raises a curious statistic, which points to a third possible reason that young Japanese American women, primarily between the ages of 18 and 24, would pursue social outlets outside their "unchosen community." Gray stated, "Nisei leaders believe, however, that drastic changes must come in the family system if Japanese Americans are to be assimilated." The article highlights what nisei leaders called the "excess girls problem." According to the article, in 1940, there were five women of marriageable age to every three young men. "How to find husbands for the two excess girls in every five baffles the brainiest Nisei, but one of the obvious possible solutions is intermarriage. It might solve not only the excess girls puzzle but also ultimately aid in the ‘melting’ of this racial minority." The possibly that the co-ed social activities of the YWCA were viewed as increasing a young woman’s access to a marriageable partner cannot be discounted.

In 1936 the Girls’ Cultural Guild, a department at the Portland YWCA, "recruited" about 30 young Japanese-American women. By 1938 the participation of Japanese-American high school girls in the Girl Reserves had noticeably increased. In 1941 the Business and Industrial Department reported to the National YWCA that they had 63 Japanese-American members, most of who were between 18 and 24 years old. Forty of these women were identified by occupation as business and professional and 23 as industrial. Forty women were also identified as Protestants and eleven women as Buddhists.

The terminology used by the leadership of the YWCA to describe their Japanese-American members prior to internment provides an indicator of how the leadership related to these young women. In 1940, Betty Britton, the Girl Reserves secretary described "Joint planning by Japanese, Negro, and American club groups." She softened the tension created by calling the clubs, composed of young white women, "American," by stating, "We adopt this title here for white girls because it is the one used by the Japanese though they too are Americans." The implication that the Japanese-Americans "use" the title "Japanese club groups" depicted a chosen desire by Japanese-Americans to be separate from the white club groups. In retrospect, Britton’s recognition that the Japanese were Americans seems cruelly juxtaposed against an apparent lack of concern with how the description reflected the status of black women. This, however, is the only place, prior to December 7, 1941, where the YWCA leadership exhibits a consciousness that the Japanese-Americans were Americans. Four clubs that included Japanese-Americans were active at the YWCA in 1941: the Japanese Girls’ Cultural Guild (a sub-group of the Girls’ Cultural Guild); the Japanese Girl Reserves; the Japanese Girl Reserves Alumnae; and the Japanese Young Women’s Guild. The titles highlight the lack of an option for white women to be participants in the "Japanese club group," and connote a proper place for Japanese-Americans at the YWCA. The tension in the terminology, which the secretary struggled with, was the reality that the proper name for the "American club groups" would have been "Caucasian club groups." That may have been a true depiction of reality; however, it would have been difficult to reconcile with the way the leadership sought to represent the organization. The prayer recited at the March 11, 1941 board meeting reflects the contradiction, "We rejoice in the fact that the ‘Y’ has been unified, all groups, creeds and colors but each still being allowed to keep their own individuality."

The methods of identifying the clubs tended to depict an isolated, albeit inclusive, means of defining member’s relationship to the YWCA community. Significantly, the isolation from the "American club groups" reflects a cultural division in the case of the Japanese-Americans, whereas for black women it was clearly a racial division. The 1941 report to the national indicates frustration by Japanese-American members regarding their isolation from the white members. Britton wrote,

The secretary’s suggestion that Japanese-American women hesitated to be "too closely connected" with the YWCA, because of their religion, is convenient, since the method of identifying the clubs tended to distort possible inroads for greater connection. That Japanese-American women sought out a white advisor implies a lack of hesitation to be more closely connected to the organization.

The relationship of Japanese-American women to the YWCA is not, however, a story of complete segregation. In 1938 the Girl Reserves Committee stated their desire to "invite an outstanding Oriental woman to come on the committee." Perhaps, Frances Maeda, a Japanese-American woman on the Girl Reserves’ office staff, pictured in the Oregonian with other YWCA members in December 1941, is the woman they invited. Maeda’s involvement in Portland certainly was outstanding. The Oregonian reported in June 1939 that the Portland Youth Council member was selected to represent Japanese-American young people at the World Christian Youth conference in Amsterdam. She had graduated from Jefferson High School in 1931, and attended Willamette University, before graduating from Denver University. After graduation Maeda returned to Portland, and worked with young people at the Japanese Methodist church, acted as an advisor on the Junior Epworth League, and as an advisor to the Girl Reserves at the YWCA. The YWCA Committee of Membership and Religion listed her as a member in 1939 and 1940. The Girl Reserves employed Maeda as a YWCA stenographer in 1941. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when the US government froze the financial assets of the issei, she acted as a liaison between the YWCA and the JACL, consulting with Japanese families needing food and rent.

Japanese-American and white women also participated in group activities at the YWCA central building. The Japanese-American members, unlike black members, did not meet in a separate building and, in the summer, they attended Camp Westwind with white women. In 1941 the secretary reported to the National YWCA that "two Japanese counselors were our only inter-racial representatives (at a Girl Reserves visit to Camp Westwind). Both made splendid contributions to the program and played a definite part in bringing understanding of their own race." The same document mentions a disappointing camp session sponsored by the Business and Industrial Department. The secretary accounted for the lack of cohesion in the camp session by explaining that campers had arrived at various times throughout a four-day weekend. Presumably, the sporadic arrival times were indicative of the logistical and financial difficulty for working women missing two days of work. In the report, the secretary offset the lack of cohesion, by drawing the National YWCA’s attention to how the Portland YWCA was striving to meet the organization’s "interracial" aims. She stated that, "The interracial character of the camp with the Chinese, Japanese, and Caucasians in attendance had real value in the way of fellowship and understanding." It is interesting that, in 1941, her understanding of "interracial" did not require the presence of black women.

White members of the YWCA demonstrated a strong interest in the potential of expanding their cultural and international awareness by associating with Japanese-American women. In 1940, the Fe-Lo Club, which acted as an umbrella club at the YWCA to the Girls’ Cultural Guild and the Japanese Girls’ Cultural Guild, organized numerous activities that brought young Japanese-American and white women together. The Fe-Lo news sheet reported on January 16 that members of the Girls’ Cultural Guild acted as hostesses at a banquet. The banquet honored "all pioneers who have resided in Portland or vicinity, at least forty years since their arrival from Japan, or are sixty-five years of age or older." The same month the Fe-Lo Club accepted the invitation of the Japanese Girl Reserves Alumnae to attend their monthly meeting.

On March 1 and 2, the Japanese Girl Reserves, the Japanese Girls’ Cultural Guild and the Portland Japanese Women’s Society teamed up and presented an annual doll festival at the Public Service Building. The event attracted 6,000 visitors. The following day, the Japanese Girls’ Culture Guild, the Girls’ Culture Guild and the Young Women’s Guild held Japan Day at the YWCA. The March 12 Fe-Lo news sheet reported that, "All those who failed to attend the Japan Day Program . . . missed something wonderful. The hall was decorated with pink cherry blossoms, and girls in lovely Japanese kimonos."

The rhetoric of the YWCA leadership reflected an effort to be interracial. I suspect, however, that genuine cultural interest in the Japanese-Americans provided a comfortable buffer against growing pressure from the National to examine their interracial work. The Portland YWCA frequently provided an opportunity for young Japanese-Americans to interact with white women. However, not understanding the Japanese-American hopes of assimilation, the YWCA leadership, desiring to develop an international awareness and their own capacity for relating to other cultures, sought to highlight their cultural differences. Black women, on the other hand, seem to be entirely absent. It would require World War II, pressure from the black community in Portland, and the mandates of the National YWCA to force the Portland leadership to begin to truly reckon with the meaning of the term "interracial".

In the 1940 report to the National, the secretary of the Young Women’s Department was asked to identify "Community Changes which have affected the Program." She wrote, "The tide of prejudice due to war pressures particularly with respect to Orientals’ and the Negro’s place in national defense is affecting our program rather intangibly, but nevertheless enough to create a consciousness of it on the part of the Staff at least. There seems likewise to be a stronger self-consciousness of the girls, Negro, white, and Japanese, about prejudice." In contrast, on August 6, 1940, Anne Guthrie, an international secretary for the YWCA, visited Portland and stated, "Because the Young Women’s Christian association has the tremendous advantage of having forged in peace time the links of international friendship which are needed so desperately in a war-torn world, its work today is more important than ever before." On December 7, 1941, those links of international friendship, which the YWCA leadership saw their organization as furthering by their welcoming of Japanese-American women into their community, would be put to the first of many tests. On December 8, the Oregonian reported that the FBI had arrested 17 issei men because their prominent social position in the Japanese community indicated that they "might be trouble-makers." One of those arrested was the father of one of their members. "The family bank account had been frozen and the family was in need of food."

Jane Mansbridge defines "community" as, "a group in which the individual members can trust other members more than they can trust strangers not to "free ride" or "defect" in social dilemmas, not to exploit the members of the group in other ways, and on occasion to further the perceived needs of other members of the group rather than their own needs." Asserting that "solidarity is not the same as support," bell hooks states that, "To experience solidarity, we must have a community of interests, shared beliefs, and goals around which to unite, to build Sisterhood." In this section I use Mansbridge’s definition of community, to compare and contrast the response of the Japanese-American members, with the leadership’s response, in the face of a massive social dilemma. With bell hooks’ wise words in mind, I question whether the pivotal issue preventing the YWCA leadership from fulfilling their end of the bargain in maintaining the community, was a failure to recognize that what the community members needed was not support, but solidarity. I attribute the apparent lack of any response, by black YWCA members, to the internment of Japanese-American YWCA members, to black member’s isolation from the central YWCA. This segregation served to prevent the development of a "community of interests, shared beliefs, and goals around which to unite, to build Sisterhood" between Japanese-American and black members.

Based on the aims promoted by the leadership of the JACL, for a full decade prior to Pearl Harbor, the call for "resistance", and not just "protection", had to come from a part of the dominant society. Japanese-Americans needed associations in the dominant society to demonstrate that community solidarity was an "American" trait. They needed their newly "chosen" communities to demonstrate that it was "American" to resist the oppression of Americans, or to demonstrate that it was "Christian" to "do unto others as you would have done unto you." Without this initiative, from an organization like the YWCA, which could have effectively turned to its Christian foundation to call for solidarity and resistance, the JACL’s appeal to "Americanism" had not led to assimilation but rather to total immobilization.

Pursinger, in his extensive research at the Oregon State Archives, discovered evidence that the YWCA leadership did spend December 8, 1941, clamoring to mobilize an effective response to the arrest of the member’s father.

This immediate response on the part of the YWCA is extremely significant. It demonstrates a spontaneous reaction made on behalf of their community, and more importantly an extension of solidarity to fellow community members. Few immediate responses in favor of Japanese-Americans were forth-coming. Pursinger details only three similar reactions. Extensive anti-Japanese sentiment, by powerful forces in the dominant society, calling for the evacuation and, in many cases, the deportation of Japanese-Americans are documented month-by-month, from December 1941 to September 1942 in the Oregonian and the Oregon Journal.

The usage of the terms "American-Japanese groups" and "American born Japanese" is significant because they mark a political resort by the YWCA to terminology that identified the nisei as Americans. After 1941, this terminology would be more commonly, although not consistently, applied. Before Pearl Harbor this terminology was generally employed only by the JACL. The decision to assign advisors to Japanese-American groups at the YWCA appears to be inconsistent with the 1941 report to the National indicating that Japanese-Americans approached the secretary seeking a white advisor. I suspect the actions of the Japanese-American members described in the National report are accurate, but Pearl Harbor motivated action on their request. The Oregonian or the Oregon Journal did not publish YWCA letters to the editor between December 7, 1941 and January 31, 1942. Finally, it is curious that the rhetoric employed by the leadership of the YWCA, in the face of a social dilemma, does not reflect reliance on their Christian roots to inform their actions. Especially since the stated purpose of the YWCA is, "To build a fellowship of women and girls devoted to the task of realizing in our common life those ideals of personal and social living to which we seek to understand Jesus, to share his love for all people and to grow in the knowledge and love of God."

In December 1941, the YWCA leadership sent to a letter to each Japanese-American member of the YWCA offering specific services to the Japanese community. The letter, published in the JACL news sheet, offered a place of meeting and help in transportation and housing problems. The Japanese stenographers, laid off by government orders forbidding employment of persons of Japanese ancestry, began participating in "volunteer service at the YWCA and through the Y, at the Volunteer Bureau and Community Chest." Perhaps, this volunteer work reflects the program formulated to help support American defense efforts, which the YWCA wrote about to Governor Sprague. It is worth reflecting on the community spirit exhibited by the Japanese-American stenographers. The willingness to provide volunteer services to the YWCA, after they lost their jobs, because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, demonstrates remarkable commitment to community as defined by Mansbridge.

Japanese-Americans, also, accepted some of the services offered by the YWCA in their letter. The Department of Religion and Membership reported to the National, in 1941, that "Japanese clubs have turned to the YWCA for advice and help, coming frequently and in large enough groups to bring criticism" I believe the criticism that the secretary is referring to here is criticism from the dominant society for the YWCA’s willingness to assist the Japanese-Americans. This reading is significant and it should be noted that there is also the possibility, which I am rejecting, that the secretary’s comments referred to criticism of the YWCA being brought by Japanese-Americans. It is important to consider that there was tremendous evidence that the YWCA would face severe criticism by acting in solidarity with the Japanese-Americans to mobilize resistance to forced evacuation. Keeping their community in tact and serving the needs of their community could have been prioritized during the war as the most important goal facing the YWCA. Their actions could have been justified and informed by their Christian ideals. If this had happened, it is realistic to think they could have consistently worked in solidarity with their Japanese-American membership. Unfortunately, when powerful forces in the dominant society refused to recognize that Japanese-Americans were Americans, the YWCA remained supportive, but silent. By accepting a viewpoint that "Americanism" mandated viewing Japanese-Americans as the enemy, the leadership of the YWCA defected from their responsibilities to the YWCA community.

Prior to internment in May 1942, the JACL, on at least one occasion, took the YWCA up on their offer of meeting space. Additionally, the YWCA tracked and attended legislative hearings pertaining to the Japanese-Americans, provided storage space for the protection of "evacuated families’ keepsakes" and provided transportation to the assembly center. The YWCA was a participating organization on a committee organized by the Council of Churches "to correlate the work of various agencies working with Japanese groups," which included "influential citizens to help with the financial interests and welfare." The YWCA worked with the FBI to provide identification for, and in identifying members of the Japanese-American community. Although this work with the FBI, at first, alarmed me, I believe they did this work with good faith towards their Japanese-American members.

The YWCA sponsored two Christmas parties, organized by the Japanese-American clubs, at the central YWCA in 1941. Curiously, the January 6, 1941 minutes reflect on these events and report that the "Police department watched the corner for trouble. There was none and the groups had the added protection of a member of the Board." Whether they expected trouble from the Japanese community, or from anti-Japanese contingents in the dominant society, is not at all clear. On April 10, 1942, after plans for evacuation had been announced, the Girl Reserves held a ring ceremony for the Japanese-American members. This was a traditional event where young women who had taken certain steps to earn the honor, pledged their loyalty to the Girl Reserves.

After all persons of Japanese ancestry were evacuated to the Portland Assembly Center, the YWCA secured permission to visit the Center. On May 12, the Girl Reserve Alumnae reported on their "plans for their club work at the Center." That the Girl Reserve Alumnae, or any club at the Portland YWCA, actually organized club work at the Portland Assembly Center seems unlikely. More likely, some individual members arranged to visit with members in the Center. The 1942 Girl Reserves report indicated "great interest in problems of Japanese because of intimate friendships. Joint meetings before they left, visits at camp, correspondence." The Oregonian and the Oregon Journal provide regular coverage between May and September of the spectacular work performed by the Girl Reserves in the Victory Gardens and the beet fields. High levels of Girl Reserves’ and other YWCA club’s energy also were poured into accommodating soldier’s social needs, which primarily meant recruiting girls to attend dances and play board games with soldiers.

Although the scope of this essay cannot do justice to the subject, I will briefly highlight the need for future critical analysis concerning the YWCA’s emphasis on and dedication to providing for the needs of men in uniform. When contrasted with the response levied to resist a direct assault to their community, this work raises interesting questions about the purposes of a female-centered organization like the YWCA. There was certainly no shortage of organizations and individuals in Portland prepared to provide for the needs of soldiers temporarily based in Portland. When a board member presented a report from the YWCA, YMCA and Council of Churches Service Men’s Club, she noted "that they have a waiting list of those wanting to help." At the same board meeting "The Girl Reserve Committee outlined the concern of their girls for real service activities during this National and World emergency." Between May 31 and February 10, 1942, the minutes of various board meetings frequently express concern that "emphasis must be placed on normal balance of the regular program of the YWCA. To understand our program and not to take up defense projects that upset our normal life--our objective. From that point we can go into defense activities." By August 1942, however, the YWCA decided to completely turn over the Williams Avenue Branch, the segregated branch for black women, to the United Service Organization. The USO used the building as a center for black soldiers. In December 1942 a board member moved that the YWCA accept the designation to provide "a paid worker to act as hostess to the inductees who come to Portland . . . It is a trying lonely time for the boys, and they need constructive guidance." Since multiple organizations in Portland were actively assisting the soldier’s needs, the YWCA was not in a unique position to do this patriotic work. Therefore, it seems curious that the needs of soldiers often seem to superseded the needs of black members, and the needs of Japanese-American members in a "trying lonely time." I am not suggesting, however, that the activities in support of the men in uniform were performed instead of resistance to the evacuation of their community members. The unquestioned support of the soldiers, and the organization’s capitulation from solidarity to support in the face of criticism served to define the boundaries of community for the YWCA leadership. Those boundaries seemed to be dictated at times not by a Christian commitment to the advancement of women but rather by a patriotic loyalty to patriarchal society that saw women’s primary role in the service of men.

If nothing else, the organization’s prioritizing of caring for the genuine needs of men--organizing and staffing dances and other social affairs for them--enhances the possibility that membership and participation in the YWCA exposed a young woman to a greater array of marriageable young men. It is unfortunate that these services--that is, the support of the men in uniform and the assistance provided to ease the evacuation of Japanese-Americans--which were viewed as highly patriotic, were provided at expense to the YWCA community.

In November 1942, Miss Bartholomew, a board member, gave "a very interesting account of her recent trip to Idaho, to visit the Minidoka Project." I believe the use of "project" to describe the Minidoka Relocation Center, in Hunt, Idaho is telling. Prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the leadership depicts Japanese-American involvement in the YWCA as a project, which expanded their international and interracial aims. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, in many ways, instead of enhancing the YWCA’s aims, Japanese-American members became a project to which the YWCA could provide services.

Beyond the involvement I have detailed, the National YWCA orchestrated all other YWCA work performed in relation to the interned Japanese-American members. The national YWCA appointed secretaries to investigate the "Japanese situation" and to help internees establish YWCA clubs in the relocation centers. The National YWCA reported that, "The YWCA program has been conducted in each of the ten relocation centers at the request of the Japanese women and girls themselves under evacuee leadership and with supervision from National Board and staff members. The YWCA has served as the link between life in the centers and the changing world outside."

In December 1944, Portland began to anticipate the return of Japanese-Americans in the coming year. The Portland YWCA issued an invitation, reported on in the Oregonian, "to Japanese women and girls to make use of the YWCA facilities." The article quoted a Portland YWCA resolution that stated,

The resolution demonstrates a renewed sense of solidarity, now that civil defense needs had passed, and, more importantly, reflects a desire to be instrumental in easing the transition back to the Portland community. This extension of solidarity is significant, because there were many forces (led predominantly by the American Legion and agricultural interests in Hood River) that were hostile to the return of Japanese-Americans.

Unable to abandon hopes of assimilation in the American culture, Japanese-American women slowly trickle back to a YWCA that welcomes them. How that relationship evolves was not clear by the end of the decade. There are, however, hopeful signs that indicate a more sophisticated post-war analysis of what it meant to "build a fellowship of women and girls" by the leadership of the Portland YWCA. The increased post-war awareness, the increased willingness to take risks, and the increased activism of black women at the YWCA provoked this analysis. In 1945, the Williams Avenue Branch was returned to the YWCA. However, when it opened in 1946, as the Williams Avenue Center, it would strive to serve the whole community, regardless of race. In December 1946, the director of William’s Avenue Center wrote, "The Japanese American Citizens’ League has held two social meetings (at the Center), which has given us racial variety and made more friends for our aims. Of course, part of the friendliness is due to a long-standing personal relationship with me, but I have tried to make them conscious that their problems are a part of the whole racial problem." That same month she would report on a Christmas party where 80 members, with an even split of black and white women, and two Japanese-American women, experienced "the same thrill of real beauty and real friendship." In 1947, Frances Maeda, who relocated to Boston, Massachusetts after internment at Minidoka, returned to Portland to participate in "an effort to raise money to share with the Art Museum the expense for the Harmon Foundation Art Exhibit of outstanding Americans of Negro origin." The event was co-sponsored by the Portland YWCA and the Portland Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. These events are astounding because they represent the beginning of a period in history where black, white and Japanese-American members of the Portland YWCA organized and socialized together. They indicate that black women of the YWCA, as they struggled to achieve equality in America and to simultaneously struggled to find respect, loyalty and solidarity within the YWCA community, brought a level of political sophistication and an understanding of how to deal with race that was not developed, by the early forties, in the YWCA leadership. As future Capstone students explore the 1950s, a pivotal question will be how, and whether, solidarity developed between black, Asian-American and white members that encouraged Japanese-American women to continue seeking assimilation into American society through participation in the YWCA community.