Woodland man’s challenging life helped him ‘become strong’

WOODLAND — During his 96 years on Earth, George Tsugawa was jailed in a Japanese internment camp, forced to cope with rampant racism and worked his way out of poverty, to name just a few of his hardships.

Today, he owns a thriving nursery in Woodland and is frequently seen supervising his business, cracking jokes with customers and employees. According to Tsugawa, the obstacles in his life helped him become resilient.

“The experiences that I’ve gone through, with the internment and this and that, it makes you a stronger person,” he said. “That could be something I’d like to pass onto people, to become strong and never give up.”

Imprisoned

Tsugawa was born in Everett, but he spent most of his childhood in Hillsboro, Ore. His parents, immigrants from Japan, ran a small produce market.

After his father died when he was about 20, his family moved to Portland.

The attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, changed their lives.

“We, as Japanese, were not trusted at all,” he said. “They wanted us rounded up as quick as possible and put behind bars so they could keep an eye on us. We could’ve been a bunch of spies, you know.”

At first, they faced an 8 p.m. curfew. But from May through September 1942, the Tsugawas and 3,500 other people of Japanese descent were forced into the Portland Expo Center (then called the Pacific International Livestock Association). They were crammed into uncleaned animal pens with no bathrooms.

“You began to smell like what (animals) were in there. I can still remember, they had these five-gallon buckets out in the open,” he said. “If you had to go, you used those five-gallon buckets, all up and down the hall. That was the restroom.”

The imprisoned Japanese-Americans had no idea what could happen to them next.

“The whole thing was such a mystery,” Tsugawa said.

Idaho internment

In September 1942, the Tusgawa family was taken by train to the Minidoka Relocation Center near Twin Falls, Idaho. Machine gun towers loomed at every corner.

“Eventually the (guards) got used to us,” he said. “They realized we weren’t going to blow up everything . but we were still behind barbed wires.”

Tsugawa and a few others were hired to cut up and recycle tin cans for $12 to $15 per month, but they rarely actually worked.

“We all knew how to play pinochle, and we’d go into tents put up for the weather,” he said. “Three guys would play pinochle, and one guy was out cutting cans. We’d take turns. The fourth one was always on the watch for us.”

The detained Japanese also danced in the evening to the recorded swing music of the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

Tsugawa said he “still doesn’t have any hard feelings” about the internment experience.

“I should have (anger). I should be really bitter, but we just learned to become better citizens,” he said.

Racism and poverty

In 1944, when internment camps began closing, the Tsugawa family moved to Boise and rented a small house. While there, George’s mother died from cancer. He worked multiple jobs to feed his two younger siblings because his two older brothers were fighting overseas — one in the Pacific, one in Europe — for the country that had earlier imprisoned their family.

Although the war was winding down, prejudice persisted, such as when Tsugawa tried to go out with his visiting high school friends.

“All the restaurants had big signs out that said, ‘No Japs Allowed,’ ” he said of one such encounter. “These (white) friends of mine, they’re in full American uniform, United States Army, and I was more or less their guest, but they wouldn’t serve us.”

When the war ended, Tsugawa and his returning brothers were broke. After brief residencies in Beaverton and Hillsboro, they moved to Woodland in 1956 in a truck filled with “junk.” On the advice of a friend, they began growing strawberries.

Tsugawa and his wife, Mable (the pair married in 1950), struggled with farming at first. To make matters worse, their six kids dealt with racism at Woodland schools.

“My kids, as they went to school, they got into more scrapes because they were called Japs. That’s the way that life works,” he said.

Most adults in Woodland also took a while to adjust to their Japanese-American neighbors, Tsugawa said.

“I think it was the first time they’d ever seen a stranger that was some other (race) besides white.”

However, by the time his youngest son, Martin, graduated high school in 1969, Tsugawa said the white students had begun accepting the Tsugawa children.

“I thought that was quite a big thing, the turnaround of the kids,” he said. “When my kids first went to school, they were called Japs. Before it was all over, (Martin) was student body president.”

And the Tusgawa family became good friends with their next-door white neighbors, including Erin Thoeny, who said her father was close with George Tsugawa.

“He’s hardworking and genuine,” she said of Tsugawa. “There’s true gems in this world, and he’s one of them.”

The nursery begins

In 1980, George and Mable Tsugawa noticed an abandoned nursery in Woodland’s north end, and Mable got an idea.

“She kept saying, ‘Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a nursery?’ ” George Tsugawa said. “She thought all we had to do is put on some nice-looking clothes and put a couple of plants out there.”

Despite their lack of experience, the couple opened Tsugawa Nursery in March 1981. George was already about 60 years old. The store wasn’t a success initially, Tsugawa said.

“On the first day, we sold one geranium,” he joked. “But that made (Mable) try that much harder. She put her life into this whole place.”

After years of slowly building a customer base, Tsugawa Nursery has become a Woodland institution and has remained so even after Mable Tsugawa’s death in 2011 at 84.

“I am proud, but it didn’t just happen overnight,” he said. “It took a lot of work (and) a lot of worries.”

Although Tsugawa doesn’t do much day-to-day work in the nursery anymore due to his difficulty walking, he still supervises.

“They’re not going to get anything past George, he knows exactly what’s going on,” Thoeny said.

Tsugawa said his favorite aspect of the nursery is meeting customers.

“People that love gardening, flowers, they’ve got a different soul,” he said. “They have more heart, they have more understanding.”

And despite the town’s first reactions to his family, Tsugawa said he will always love Woodland.

“I love this town, I really do. I love everything about it,” he said.