Pamela A. Okano
Pamela A. Okano is a retired Seattle attorney. When not writing, she enjoys travel to Japan and Mexico, yoga, gardening, cooking, Mariners baseball, Husky football, bird-watching, opera, and classical and jazz music.
Updated March 2023
Stories from This Author
We Are Not Strangers—A Story of a Sephardic Jew and His Japanese American Neighbor
April 19, 2024 • Pamela A. Okano
Japanese Americans have heard about how non-Japanese helped some JA families during World War II. On Bainbridge Island, where I grew up, Walt and Millie Woodward (owners/publishers of the only newspaper to oppose JA incarceration) and Felix Narte (who helped save the Kitamotos’ berry farm), are well known. On a more regional level, Wayne Collins is famed for the years he spent restoring US citizenship to Nisei who renounced it and “returned” to Japan, only to find that they had …
The Kawamoto-Wipala Farm in Leland, Washington: A Farm for the Ages — Part 5
Dec. 3, 2023 • Pamela A. Okano
Read Part 4 >> Because of his injury, Joe decided he needed another line of work in addition to farming, so he became a realtor. He, Jean and Ray continued to run the farm. Their collective hard work led to Joe winning Jefferson County’s Conservation Farmer of the Year award in 1962. In the meantime, Itsuno had passed away in 1958 at the age of 81. Kaichi lived for two more years, still slender, mentally alert, and active, until his …
The Kawamoto-Wipala Farm in Leland Washington: A Farm for the Ages — Part 4
Nov. 26, 2023 • Pamela A. Okano
Read Part 3 >> The War A PROJECT FARM was being started at the camp, so Joe volunteered to drive a tractor, since he had experience in driving one back home. He found out quickly, however, that driving a tractor at Tule Lake was nothing like what he had ever done before. The tractors were being used to plant row crops, initially, rutabagas, with rows half a mile long and flat. The soil at Tule Lake was a mix of …
The Kawamoto-Wipala Farm in Leland Washington: A Farm for the Ages — Part 3
Nov. 19, 2023 • Pamela A. Okano
Read Part 2 >> In a 1933 double wedding, Joe married Jean Nakata, and his sister Pauline married Jean’s brother, John Nakata, siblings from the Nakata family on Bainbridge Island. According to John and Pauline’s son, Wayne, “Although the bridegrooms economized on the minister, they, without the brides’ knowledge, still had to borrow $100 to cover their respective wedding, reception, and honeymoon costs. And the two couples had to share one car to go on their honeymoon!” When Joe and Jean …
The Kawamoto-Wipala Farm in Leland Washington: A Farm for the Ages — Part 2
Nov. 12, 2023 • Pamela A. Okano
Read Part 1 >> At some point, Kaichi found an abandoned homestead next to Lake Leland that he wanted to buy. But under the state alien land law, Japanese citizens could not own land, nor could they become US citizens. However, the Kawamoto children were all US-born Americans. When Joe, the eldest, turned 12 in 1919, one of Kaichi’s Caucasian friends, George Thomas, became Joe’s legal guardian, enabling the $4000 purchase to be made in Joe’s name. The property was 160 …
The Kawamoto-Wipala Farm in Leland Washington: A Farm for the Ages — Part 1
Nov. 5, 2023 • Pamela A. Okano
The best news I got in 2021 came from my cousin Vern. He called to say he had learned that our mothers’ family farm would be preserved as a farm forever. I immediately called my brother Mike. All three of us were ecstatic. The Kawamoto Farm is in Leland, Washington, an unincorporated area just north of Quilcene. Set on undulating hills and easily visible from Highway 101 which runs through its eastern edge, the property lies next to Lake Leland, …
Book review: Beyond the Betrayal, The Memoir of a World War II Japanese American Draft Resister of Conscience
March 31, 2023 • Pamela A. Okano
Yoshito Kuromiya was one of 63 Nisei who resisted being drafted during World War II from the Heart Mountain, Wyoming, incarceration camp for Japanese Americans (JAs). All were convicted of violating the Selective Service Act and imprisoned. Altogether, approximately 300 Nisei from eight of the 10 camps resisted the draft. Most served time in prison for it. Kuromiya later went to college and became a landscape architect in Southern California. His memoir, Beyond the Betrayal, is the only one by …
