My Family Lost Our Farm During Japanese Incarceration. I Went Searching for What Remains.
West of Sacramento, in a rural community called Broderick, my grandfather Shigeki, and his brothers, Yoshimi, Tadao, and Hideo, were farmers. We were told the land they worked was leased by my great-uncle’s in-laws, the Abe family, who were glad to have the labor of the young and fit Murai brothers. They were quiet men, industrious and skilled. The work was difficult and they must have savored the occasional breeze off of the Sacramento River. The Murai brothers were of the Nisei generation, born in the United States to Japanese immigrants (Issei), but my grandfather was raised and educated mostly in Japan before he returned to work this land, to earn a living, to build a life. His story was not unusual. In 1940, 45 percent of employed Japanese people on the Pacific Coast worked in agriculture. Californian Issei and Nisei farmers dominated the wholesale and retail fruit and vegetable markets in the state.
I know very little about this farm. My family left it behind for good in 1942, when my grandfather was in the Army and his brothers were incarcerated along with thousands of other Japanese Americans during World War II. The land never belonged to our family, but the house they left behind had been built lovingly with the help of the Japanese community in the area after a fire had destroyed their previous home. When they left home, the house was still relatively new, and they had been excited for the memories that would be made there. But many of the children they imagined raising in that house would instead grow up in incarceration camps.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2022/02/my-family-lost-our-farm-during-japanese-incarceration-i-went-searching-for-what-remains/
