In their hard work

Italians are like we Japanese

Daughters and wives, too

Work all day in the fields.

-- Teiko Tomita, translated by Gail M. Nomura[1]

Sunnydale is an unincorporated area located about ten miles south of Seattle. Once the name of the entire region, today it refers specifically to the area around Burien’s Sunnydale Elementary and Highline High Schools.

Early European Americans called the area “Hardscrabble,” as its heavily wooded swamps did not promise much except hard work. Around 1872 a local developer and future King County sheriff named Mike Kelly decided a brighter name would attract more settlers, and therefore renamed it “Sunnydale.”[2]

The first Issei to settle around Sunnydale was probably Arizumi, who settled there in 1906. Uhachi Tamesa followed in 1908, as did several dozen more over the next fifteen years, as street car lines started pushing into the Lake Burien area.[3] The land was poor, but by growing chickens and using the manure to fertilize their fields, men could earn a living selling poultry, eggs, and seasonal crops such as berries.[4]

Once these men established themselves, they began sending home for wives. While a few men had been married before coming to the United States, most were unmarried. The way they found wives was by sending photographs to parents or grandparents, who then went to a community “go-between,” who in turn found a young woman willing to marry the man in the picture. Although a rather shocking concept to many Americans, the prospective wives usually came from families known to the parents or grandparents, and by most accounts it was as likely a method for producing happy marriages as any other.[5]

Sunnydale’s best-known picture bride was Teiko Matsui Tomita. Tomita lived with her husband Masakazu and their children in Sunnydale from 1929 to 1967. (Excepting, of course, the war years, when the Tomitas were interned at Tule Lake and Heart Mountain.) While Masakazu Tomita ran a nursery business, Teiko Tomita’s fame is due to Snow of Rainier, a book of poetry published in Japan in 1956.[6]

During the late 1910s, several Sunnydale Issei began buying land in the names of their American-born children. Although this was technically illegal, they were assisted in their actions by a sympathetic attorney named O’Brien.[7] Owning land in such a way was nerve-wracking, as one never knew when King County would crack down, and subject owners to lawsuits or eviction. Still, it was preferable to leasing, as it allowed the farmers to build chicken coops and greenhouses, and to plant prune, pear, and apple orchards, often with berries planted between the rows.[8] Although writing specifically about orchard work in Hood River, Oregon, the description of such work provided by Robert S. Yasui is worth repeating here:[9]

Summer work began as soon as school was over in late May. [Yasui’s mother] Shidzuyo would lead the three little boys into the fields where they spent the day weeding and hoeing the strawberry plants. During May and June there were berries to pick; in July cherries… It was very hard work, and the summer sun was hot. The little boys complained about the heat and the backbreaking work but Shidzuyo was firm; she was adamant that her boys learn to work hard and diligently, even under adverse conditions.

To reduce competition between Japanese farmers and present a united front against increasingly restrictive anti-Asian land laws, a South Park Japanese Association was established in 1918.[10]  (South Park, a then-mostly Italian community lying across the Duwamish River from Boeing Field, is where the Seattle streetcar lines ended. Thus it was a comparatively important regional node.)[11] The South Park Japanese Association also served various social functions, and in 1924, it organized a junior judo club that was affiliated with the Seattle Dojo.[12]

Around September 1932, the Sunnydale community established its own judo club.[13] Perhaps this was because there were finally enough Nisei youths in the area to support a club, or perhaps it was due to some tensions within the South Park/Sunnydale community. At any rate, Sunnydale Dojo was affiliated with Tentoku Kan rather than Seattle Dojo, and to the embarrassment of the man’s son, one of its parents was notorious for shouting at Seattle Dojo officials during tournaments.[14]

 Jintaro Nakatsu was among the organizers of the Sunnydale Dojo. This is not surprising, as he was a man who dearly loved sports. (Even his daughters were athletic.)[15] The club’s first building was an old shed that a Japanese farmer had abandoned some years before.[16] Later the club moved into the Sunnydale Japanese Language School, which was a less ramshackle building with more space.[17]

Visiting Tentoku Kan instructors undoubtedly included Hideo Hama, 3-dan, and Chuji Sakata, 6-dan. Unfortunately I have not been able to determine who the Sunnydale club supervisor was, or what days training took place. That said, Sunnydale’s first star was Toshio Higashi. As a teenaged 1-dan, Higashi made the Northwest all-star team that visited Los Angeles in October 1936.[18] Six months later, Higashi made the second Northwest all-star squad, and in April 1937 he was one of nine Northwestern judoka to win his individual match against the visiting Californians.[19] He was also an alternate for the 1939 Northwest all-star team.[20]

Higashi was equally successful against Northwest opponents, and on Sunday, 12 Dec 1937, he took first place at an Auburn tournament.[21] While Higashi’s older brother Masao also earned a black belt, he never enjoyed as much tournament success as Toshio.[22]

Sunnydale’s second star was Joe Nakatsu. Jintaro Nakatsu’s passion for sports included those of his children, and Joe Nakatsu was the first Sunnydale Nisei to earn a varsity letter in football.[23]  (Football was the real passion of many Northwest Nisei. “The Japanese Language School was held on Saturdays,” says Ryo Kumasaka, “but we kids would sneak out to listen to college football games on the radio.”)[24]

In January 1938, Nakatsu became captain of the Sunnydale Dojo judo team.[25] In August 1938, he was also among the few Northwesterners to beat a member of a visiting Japanese collegiate judo team.[26] Partly in recognition for this feat, the Seattle Yudanshakai promoted him to 2-dan on Friday, 30 Dec 1938.[27]

Recalling Nakatsu, Jim Yoshida of Seattle’s Tentoku Kan said:[28]

Joe didn’t say much, but we got along famously. He and I were usually the top boys in judo tournaments, which meant that often we faced each other. In one match we were both fooling around, each not wanting to throw the other, and the referee was about to call it a draw when Joe’s dad jumped up and shouted: ‘Yoshida, if you’re good enough to throw my son, I want you to throw him and win.’ Well, we both went at it, and I threw Joe. As soon as he hit the mat Joe jumped up and embraced me, and I cried because I had defeated my friend. We were that kind of buddies.

Following high school, Nakatsu continued to do judo, and he made the Northwest all-star team that visited Los Angeles in March 1939.[29]  He was especially noted for his skill in team competition, where he often paired with his friend Jim Yoshida.[30] Nakatsu did sumo, too, and in a tournament held in Portland on 8-9 Feb 1941, he won two barrels of soy for his efforts.[31]

Nakatsu’s younger brother Sam also did judo, and in 1941 he was captain of the Sunnydale junior squad.[32]

Sunnydale judoka showed their skill at school, too. This was not through fights – they were much better behaved than that -- but through Highline High School talent shows. 

Sunnydale’s Nisei children – Uhachi Tamesa’s children Minoru and Kimiya were the first) started school, unsurprisingly, at Sunnydale Elementary School.[33] If they had been a bit older, they would have attended grades 8-12 at the four-room Des Moines School, which offered two courses of study, classical and business.[34] Unfortunately, the Des Moines School was so small that it lost its accreditation in 1921.[35] Wanting their own high school, Des Moines voters passed a levy, borrowed some money, and opened Highline High School in 1924. Although Uhachi Tamesa couldn’t vote – until 1952, US law prevented Japanese from becoming US citizens – his children were Highline High School’s first Nisei graduates.[36]

Unlike many other places on the Pacific Coast, Nisei appear to have been generally liked at Highline High School. Photos in old yearbooks show them involved in many sports and clubs, and reveal that both judo and Japanese classical dancing were featured during school talent shows.[37] This relatively enlightened stance was probably sincere, too, as in 1948, a time when British Columbia was still trying to deport all Japanese Canadians and the State of Oregon was still trying to keep Japanese Americans from buying land, Highline High School elected Kriss Kodama yell queen of the year.[38]

Still, local support meant nothing to the US Army, and in March 1942 the Army relocated Sunnydale’s Japanese Americans to Heart Mountain or Tule Lake. Once in the relocation centers, adult Nisei usually volunteered for agricultural jobs in Idaho and Montana or for military service. Joe Nakatsu, for instance, joined the Army. Issei and minors, however, spent most of the war living inside the barbed wire.  “The food was terrible,” remembered Uhachi Tamesa. “Make everybody sick. Pork and beans in all that heat, three times a day. House not nice like this – more like a cattle shed.”[39]

After the war, most Sunnydale Japanese Americans relocated, usually no farther than Seattle but some as far away as Chicago and Philadelphia.[40]  Only Toshio Higashi seriously resumed judo after the war – and his class was in Santa Clara, California, rather than Washington State.[41]

Said Mrs. Tomita, the poet:[42]

Returning home from the iron stockade

Five years ago

Reconstructing our lives

Is no small thing even now.