Beginning in 1903, with the arrival of sixteen-year-old Masuo Yasui in Oregon, the author of After All These Years chronicles the lives of three generations of a Japanese-American family. 17,500 first printing. Tour. YA-A factual account of three generations of a Japanese-American family living in the Pacific Northwest. It begins in 1903, when Masuo Yasui arrived in Hood River, Oregon, to seek his fortune. This part of the story is similar to other immigrants' tales-years of hard work, loneliness, and struggles with a new language and customs. The striking distinction appears around 1919, with the rise of anti-Japanese sentiment. Yasui, his brother, their wives, and children had sacrificed much to establish a thriving general store and owned several orchards. Yasui, who spoke fluent English, was the acknowledged leader of the Japanese community in the area and an active member of the orchardists' cooperatives, the Methodist Church, and the Rotary Club. His family continued to have great success despite discrimination. Their lives were painfully disrupted, however, on December 7, 1941. Yasui was arrested as a spy and imprisoned for the rest of the war; his relatives were scattered and some were interned. This book puts human faces and emotions to the events of that period. Readers learn how racism and internment continued to affect the choices and decisions of second-generation family members. Part sociological study, part American history, part family saga, this title will make a significant addition to any library. Penny Stevens, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. Masuo Yasui settled in Hood River, Oregon in 1908, where he became prominent by running a successful store and buying orchard land. His family weathered the racial hysteria of the 1920s (particularly strong in Hood River because of Japanese land ownership) but fell victim to the virulent racial hatred triggered by the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. Kessler ( After All These Years , LJ 5/15/90) chronicles the effects of Yasui's quest for success and his family's war incarcerations (in jail and in internment camps); she follows the third generation's subsequent struggle for identity into the 1990s. This book and Linda Tamura's oral history, The Hood River Issei ( LJ 10/15/93), together give a clear picture of the Japanese American experience in one rural community. By personalizing the effects of racism, Kessler provides a valuable account that belongs in most Asian American history collections. - Katharine L. Kan, Hawaii State Lib., Honolulu Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. Beginning in 1908 when Masuo Yasui first came to Hood River, Oregon, Kessler traces the history of a Japanese American family to the present. Like thousands of other young men for whom opportunities were limited in Japan, Masuo came to America to work on the railroads. Later, the store that he and his brothers opened to supply goods to other Japanese prospered, and Masuo, with his command of English, became a successful businessman and spokesperson for the Hood River Valley issei (first-generation) community that racism had isolated from the mainstream. World War II changed everything for the Yasuis. Suspected of being a spy, Masuo spent the war years being shuttled from one detention camp to another, while his children, the nisei, were affected in different ways. Min, the only practicing attorney of Japanese descent in Oregon, chose to use himself as a test case to challenge the constitutionality of the government's orders that Japanese Americans be evacuated from the West Coast, but others in the family were interned. The family fortunes never recovered, and Masuo committed suicide not long after his return home. Different challenges face the sansei, or third, generation. Though most of them have married non-Japanese and are scattered across the country, they still retain a strong sense of family and culture. Based on extensive interviews, as well as on the Yasui Brothers Collection housed at the Oregon Historical Society, Kessler's book is an important and moving document of one American family's experience. Mary Ellen Quinn A harrowing recounting of a shameful chapter in American history. Kessler (Journalism/University of Oregon; After All These Years, 1990) is writing as much about one particular immigrant family as about all those malevolent ills that lie beneath the surface only to burst into virulent bloom in times of national stress. By the early 1930's, and despite the Depression, Japanese immigrant Masuo Yasui could be described as a success. Emigrating from Japan at the age of 16, he'd settled in Hood River, Oregon, converted to Christianity, and come to own more than a thousand acres of prime land, a flourishing general store, and numerous franchises. Meanwhile, his son became the first Japanese-American to graduate from law school, while Masuo's six other children were either in, or en route to, colleg