The Japanese Farms of Early Bellevue

By EHC Youth Volunteer, Grant

Japanese farmers in King County, especially Bellevue, were essential to providing produce to the nearby populations. Most vegetables in the region were grown by Japanese farmers, and certain crops such as strawberries were a specialty of the farmers. However, their farmlands would later be taken from them and become the foundation of modern Bellevue.

Early Japanese immigrants first arrived in Bellevue in 1898, finding work on railroads, sawmills, and canneries, barely making a living while enduring discrimination in immigration, employment, and housing. Many turned to farming, converting land covered with marshes and tree stumps into productive cropland.

Japanese farmers on the Numato Farm in Yarrow Point, Bellevue. 1925

From the Eastside Heritage Center

Through hardships they raised families, ran their own businesses, and developed a lively community life. Japanese Americans worked hard and became a vital part of the local economy, supplying 75% of Bellevue and King County’s vegetables and half the milk supply. The Japanese cleared and settled hundreds of acres of land near the center of what is now downtown Bellevue. Where shopping malls and office buildings stand today, immigrants grew strawberries and vegetables and worked at a local sawmill. Japanese Americans even had a community center located just north of present-day Bellevue Square.

By the 1920s, Bellevue had become famous for its delicious strawberries, a chief crop of many Japanese families. This led to the first annual Bellevue Strawberry Festival being held behind the Main Street school in mid-June 1925. The festival attracted 3,000 visitors, an impressive number for the small community of Bellevue. In 1935, more than 15,000 people attended the festival -- nearly five times the number of people that lived in the small town.

Truck decorated for the 1930 Strawberry Festival in Bellevue.

From Eastside Heritage Center

Most of Bellevue's strawberries at that time were grown by Japanese farmers, who together managed 472 acres of land. The three-day event continued to be held annually until 1942, the year that 60 local Japanese families were forced to go to incarceration camps.

In December of 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, generating a fear of national security across the United States. As a response to these fears, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led to mass incarceration of all people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast.

Japanese families, knowing that they would lose their homes and belongings, rushed to sell their businesses, properties, and vehicles for next to nothing. On May 20, 1942, Bellevue’s 60 Japanese families, 300 people, were forced to board a train in Kirkland, where they would end up in an incarceration camp located at Tule Lake in Northern California. This camp was the largest of 10 inland incarceration camps.

Japanese farmers occupied many of the 515 vendor stalls at Pike Place Market in 1939. However, during the spring of 1942, crops left by Japanese farmers in Bellevue and elsewhere in the region were not harvested, and white farmers could not fill the gap. The number of stalls at Pike Place Market fell to 196. The Strawberry Festival, which made Bellevue a tourist destination, did not take place that year.

Over in Bellevue, Eastside businessmen, including Miller Freeman, started suburban and urban development, which would transform the city into what we know today. The cleared farmland left by the Japanese farmers became prime real estate for upscale shopping centers and residential areas, that could be made accessible with new highways, including the I-90 bridge which was completed in 1940.

Later, when 11 of the 60 Japanese American farmer families returned to Bellevue in 1945, nothing was the same. Their properties were damaged, they lost their stored possessions, and they experienced financial struggles. This caused many Japanese families to have to move on to other professions as they couldn’t start farming again.

Sources:

https://seattleglobalist.com/2017/02/19/anti-japanese-movement-led-development-bellevue/62732

https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/strawberry-days-uprooting-more-than-lives/

https://www.historylink.org/file/4144

https://www.historylink.org/file/298

https://www.historylink.org/File/231

Eastside Stories: The Matsuoka Family

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

In the early 1900s many families left Japan and traveled across the Pacific to the United States. These immigrants settled in areas like the Eastside and became integral parts of building the cities and towns we know today. One of them was the Matsuoka Family. Leaving Kumamoto-ken, a province on one of Japan’s most southern islands, Mr. and Mrs. Matsuoka brought their two sons, Takeo (Tom) and Yoshio (John) to Washington state in 1919 after briefly living in Hawaii.

Increased immigration around the time of the Matsuoka Family’s arrival had led to the passing of the Washington State Alien Land Law , which prevented immigrants from buying land in 1921. For this reason, the Matsuoka family leased land in Kent during the 1920s and 30s, first clearing away the large stumps that had been left by the timber companies in order to farm. This extremely difficult work was remembered vividly by both Takeo and Yoshio later in their lives. To remove the stumps that littered the area and develop it into farmland, they used only horses and dynamite. They dug holes under the stumps and dynamited them to hasten their removal. Historian Asaichi Tsushima estimates that many of the stumps Japanese-Americans pulled up were 4 and 5 feet in diameter, often taking almost a whole month to remove entirely.

Once this tremendous work was complete, the Matsuoka family tended 20 acres of vegetables, sustaining themselves through the depression with farming. Yoshio recalled in a 1997 interview that the depression didn’t hit farmers as hard as others because farmers were always struggling to make ends meet. Farming led the Japanese-Americans of the Eastside to work together with their neighbors and create the Strawberry Festival in 1925 which attracted over 3,000 people across the lake. The Matsuoka family were among the many farmers who donated large quantities of strawberries and other produce to this event.

Tom Matsuoka and his sons, Ty and Tats, outside of the Bellevue Vegetable Growers Association shed, a farmer run organization which Tom helped create in the 1930s.

In 1927, Takeo was also a crucial organizer of the Seinenkai (Youth Club) for the young men who were growing up in Bellevue so that they would have a place to gather. He was also among the group that built the Kokaido (Club House), completed in 1930 where men came together as a community for recreation and to celebrate their cultural heritage. Buddhist worship was held at the Kokaido so that citizens of Bellevue no longer had to travel to Seattle to practice their religion.

After their father was crushed by a horse in 1932 and died of related injuries in 1937, Takeo and Yoshio found employment where they could. Both sons continued to farm throughout their lives. Yoshio worked on a farm leased by an Issei (first generation Japanese-American) in Auburn, WA. Takeo farmed land owned by his brother-in-law Tokio Hirotaka at 124th street in the Midlakes area where the Safeway warehouse complex is now located.

Bellevue Grade School - Fifth Grade 1940 - 1941, just before World War II and the Matsuoka Family incarceration. Takeo (Tom) Matsuoka's son, Ty, is among the students in the second row from the top.

When the United States declared war on Japan in December 1941, Japanese-Americans were incarcerated across the nation. The Matsuoka family was taken along with all Issei and Nissei (second generation Japanese-American) citizens of King County to the Pinedale Assembly Center near Fresno, California. Overall 110,000 Japanese-Americans were taken to concentration camps across America’s Western States. Individuals were allowed only one suitcase, leaving behind their personal belongings and the farms they had worked so hard to make arable. Many lived until the end of the war with very little in prison camps. The Matsuoka family was once again saved some of this hardship by their excellent agricultural skills.

In 1942, Takeo went to the Chinook area and voluntarily worked in the beet fields in order to leave incarceration. Takeo and his wife chose to stay in Montana, returning once in 1946 and leaving again for the East. His son Ty did move back much later, in 1985.

Likewise, in 1943, Yoshio requested a transfer and was moved to Hunt, Idaho where he was required to get permission to work on a sugar beet farm. In 1944, Yoshio moved with his wife and daughter to Michigan for a work opportunity. They eventually returned to Washington towards the end of the 1940s for the birth of their second daughter.

In 1950, Yoshio leased the land which he occupied until he retired, becoming known for his ability to grow the best sweet corn on the Eastside. By 1997, Yoshio (John) Matsuoka was the last Japanese-American Farmer left in Bellevue, still working his farm and growing food. It is thanks to families like the Matsuokas that the Eastside was settled. They created the farmland which made our area a resource for Seattle and led to its future development. Theirs is just one story of many that the Eastside Heritage Center strives to preserve and share.

4 teenagers, with one adult, from Bellevue on their way to a Seattle baseball game at Columbia Playfield on the 4th of July in 1932. From left to right: Guy Matsuoka, Betty Sakaguchi, Mitsi (Shiraishi) Kawaguchi, Mrs. Kazue Matsuoka, Yuri Yamaguchi

The Matsuoka Cabin was moved to Larsen Lake in 1989. At the time it belonged to the Masunage Family. This photo shows the Masunaga Family along with this historical cabin. From left to right: Yeizo Masunaga, Yeizo's wife, and Mrs. Taki Masunaga.

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Our Mission To steward Eastside history by actively collecting, preserving, and interpreting documents and artifacts, and by promoting public involvement in and appreciation of this heritage through educational programming and community outreach.

Our Vision To be the leading organization that enhances community identity through the preservation and stewardship of the Eastside’s history.

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Strawberry Festival Update

Dear friends of the Eastside Heritage Center and the Bellevue Strawberry Festival:

With no small amount of sadness, the board of the Eastside Heritage Center has decided not to produce the Bellevue Strawberry Festival in 2019. There is some chance that an outside event producer will pick up the event in the future.

The Bellevue Strawberry Festival has been an unqualified success over the years. In many ways the Eastside Heritage Center has become a victim of that success. As the festival became bigger and more popular, we knew we needed to up our game and professionalize the production to ensure quality, safety and an overall great festival experience. These requirements began to get way out in front of our capacities as a relatively small non-profit community heritage organization.

The success of the Bellevue Strawberry Festival has been due, in large part, to the quality of the vendors, musicians, suppliers, sponsors and other partners we have been able to attract. For your support we thank you. We recognize that the event has a great deal of community and brand equity and that it may be possible to restart it in the future, as the same great festival but with a far smaller role for the Eastside Heritage Center. If anything changes, our loyal friends will be the first to know.

And one last shout-out to Heather Trescases, who built the Strawberry festival from the ground up, and to Lexi and rest of the EHC staff and volunteers who put in so much time and effort to make it a success.

Thank you again for your support, and we hope everyone can fill that weekend with another great event.