Linda Gayle Tamura was born in 1949. She grew up in Hood River, Oregon, and earned a doctorate in education from Oregon State University. In 1977, she became a professor of education at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, and she later taught at Willamette University in Salem. She published two books about the experiences of Japanese Americans in Oregon during and after World War II: “The Hood River Issei: An Oral History of Japanese Settlers in Oregon’s Hood River Valley,” and “Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence: Coming Home to Hood River.” She also served as co-editor in chief of The Oregon Encyclopedia.

Source: Vital records on Ancestry.com; “The Hood River Issei: An Oral History of Japanese Settlers in Oregon’s Hood River Valley,” by Linda Tamura, University of Illinois Press, 1993; “Linda Tamura,” Densho Encyclopedia, accessed September 2024, https://encyclopedia.densho.org/authors/Linda%20Tamura/

Following the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by Japan, and the entry of the United States into World War II, the U.S. federal government began placing restrictions on Japanese Americans. In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the secretary of war to prescribe areas in the United States from which people might be excluded. Following this, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, who viewed Japanese people as an "enemy race," created military zones on the western coast of the United States from which all people of Japanese ancestry were to be forcibly removed to incarceration camps away from the coast.

In May 1942, Japanese Americans living in Oregon were compelled by military order to relocate to assembly centers either at the site of the Portland International Livestock Exposition Center or in California's San Joaquin Valley. That summer, they were transferred to incarceration centers further inland that were officially and euphemistically named "relocation centers." Most of those from Oregon were incarcerated either at Tule Lake in California or at Minidoka in Idaho. Over the course of the war, some incarcerated people were permitted to leave the camps either to provide agricultural labor or to serve in the United States armed forces, most notably in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

In December 1944, the U.S. War Department declared that Japanese Americans were free to leave the incarceration camps starting January 2, 1945. However, due to efforts by white Oregonians to prevent the return of Japanese Americans and Japanese Americans' fears of violence against them, many of those from Oregon who had been incarcerated only gradually moved back to the state over a period of time. Most of those who had been incarcerated had lost most of what land and property they had owned prior to the war. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that provided $20,000 as compensation for any surviving Japanese Americans who had been incarcerated.

Source: "Japanese American Wartime Incarceration in Oregon," by Craig Collisson, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/japanese_internment/