Donna Kaneko, Lilly Kaneko Takaki, and Rulie Kaneko Yamamoto; LaSalle Mansion; 1039 N. LaSalle Street; Chicago, IL, ca. 1946

The Dorothy and Hiroshi Kaneko Papers include booklets and articles on the redress movement, magazine and newspaper clippings, letters, newsletters, flyers, press releases, postcards, photo-cards, travel booklets, pamphlets, broadsides, receipts, clippings from the Congressional Record, programs from community events, internment camp reunion booklets and pamphlets, a map, a theater program, a menu, a guest-book, black and white photographs and negatives, and color photographs. Dorothy and Hiroshi Kaneko collected this material documenting their lives in Hood River and Salem, Oregon; Tule Lake Relocation Center, Tule Lake, California; and Chicago, Illinois. The collection dates from 1940 to 2002 with the bulk of the paper records dating in the 1980s and the bulk of the photographs dating in the 1940s. A very small portion of the material is in Japanese.

The collection is organized roughly chronologically. The photographs and negatives (Boxes 4-5) are housed separately from the paper records (Boxes 1-3).;The collection contains a menu and church group photographs documenting their lives in Oregon before they married. The Kanekos kept a guest book signed by visitors to their various residences including their barracks at Tule Lake Relocation Center, Tule Lake, California; LaSalle Mansion at 1039 N. LaSalle Street, Chicago; and 1226 W. Argyle Street, Chicago. This guest book gives a fascinating portrait of their friends and the people that they helped over the years. The collection contains material saved by Hiroshi’s father when he visited Japan 1946. These items document Japan from a visitor’s perspective during the Occupation by the Allied Forces shortly after World War II.

The majority of the collection consists of two types of material: redress publications and photographs. Hiroshi collected newspaper clippings and publications documenting the movement for Japanese American redress and reparations from the U.S. government during the 1980s. The newspaper clippings come from the Chicago Shimpo, Chicago’s only bilingual (English and Japanese) newspaper, and from the Pacific Citizen, the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) newspaper. The JACL is a national civil rights, civil liberties, and political advocacy group. Hiroshi also collected newspaper clippings about redress from the West Coast Japanese American press and mainstream newspapers such as the Chicago Sun-Times. He amassed government publications about legislative developments and about the NCJAR class action lawsuit. Hiroshi gathered publications from within the Japanese American community about the redress movement. They are important because they describe complex issues with which the Japanese American community struggled throughout the redress process.

These papers contain newspaper clippings and articles from mainstream sources about prominent Japanese Americans and other Asian Americans. The collection contains a rare issue of Scene (1953), a Chicago Japanese American magazine. The Kanekos also attended and collected material from Tule Lake Relocation Center and Granada Relocation Center reunions.

Finally, a second large component of the collection is photographs dating from the 1940s to the 1980s. These photographs document Dorothy’s life in Oregon from high school graduation until the war and life during internment camp. They also document Chicago in the late 1940s and the redress hearings held in Chicago in September 1981. Most of the photographs in this collection came from an album donated by Dorothy (Box 4, Folder 10 through Box 5, Folder 20). This album was highly acidic, so the processor dismantled it and placed photographs into archival housings. The photographs from this album provide vivid details about Dorothy’s life including her high school friends, her girls club called the Mid-Columbian Apple Maidens, carefree outings with friends, her male friends who enlisted in the U.S. Army before the war, the Morita family, life during internment camp, the arrival of her children, LaSalle Mansion, and the Kaneko farm in Indiana. The collection includes photographs of Tule Lake Relocation Center and Minidoka Relocation Center.

The procesing archivist removed approximately 3 linear feet of material from this collection and integrated it into the JASC’s library and archival collections. Removed to the library collection: Chicago Japanese American Year Book (1948), Chicago Japanese American Year Book (1949), Chicago Japanese American Year Book (1950), Camp Notes by Mitsuye Yamada (1976), and all complete issues of the Chicago Shimpo (1984-1988) and the Pacific Citizen (1969-1990). Removed to the JASC’s Record Group 8, Series 2 (Adult Day Services), Box 1, Folder 1: Tuesday Group lists and notebook. Removed to the JASC’s Record Group 9, Series 2 (Publications): JASC Newsletter (Spring 1988). Removed to the JASC’s Record Group 10 (Audio-Visual Resources): three albums of color photographs and loose black and white and color photographs.

Highlights of the collection include:

• Chicago Japanese American Year Books, 1948-1950, these books are directories of individuals and businesses in the community (see Library)

• a menu from Rainbow Restaurant, Portland, Oregon (Box 1, Folder 1)

• a guest book used by the Kanekos in Oregon, at Tule Lake Relocation Center, and at their LaSalle Mansion apartment house in Chicago (Box 1, Folder 2)

• material on the redress movement (Boxes 1-3)

• a 1953 issue of Chicago’s Scene, a Japanese American magazine (Box 3, Folder 5)

• internment camp reunion material (Box 3)

• photographs of Dorothy and Hiroshi’s churches in Oregon (Box 4, Folders 1-2), Tule Lake Relocation Center (Box 4, Folders 3 and 30), Minidoka Relocation Center (Box 4, Folder 33 and Box 5, Folder 17), LaSalle Mansion (Boxes 4-5), the Kaneko farm in Indiana (Box 5, Folder 20), and the redress hearings held in Chicago in September 1981 (Box 4, Folder 9).

This collection is open without restrictions except for: Menu (Box 1, Folder 1)- Use photocopy (Box 1, Folder 1); History of Japanese Embroidery (Box 1, Folder 4) - Use photocopy (Box 1, Folder 5); Scene Magazine (Box 3, Folder 5) - Use photocopy (Box 3, Folder 5);

Throughout this finding aid, information added by the processing archivist is found in brackets [ ].