Archives West Finding Aid

Mr. Asaichi Tsushima came to America via Vancouver, Canada, in 1907. In 1908 at the age of thirty he moved to Bellevue, Washington, and settled in Hunts Point.

Mr. Tsushima was recognized as an accomplished speaker and admired and respected as a scholar, humanitarian and historian. Public speaking was one his greatest pleasures so he assisted and participated in many projects involving the people of the community. As the years passed, his historian inclination urged him on to write this book to leave with the Bellevue Nisei (second generation) and their descendants. He wrote about his fellow Issei (first generation) pioneers who came to work and subsequently settle in the Bellevue area during the years from 1897 through 1940.

Mr. Tsushima returned to Japan and lived his last 15 years in his birthplace of Okayama. He died at the age of 91 in 1969. His wife Nami died in 1978 in the United States.

Source: English translation by Harriet (Yamagishi) Mihara, Alan Hideo and Chiye (Ito) Yabuki and Rose (Yabuki) Matsushita, February 1991

Akira Aramaki (May 19, 1913-January 8, 2004) was a Nisei and lifelong resident of Bellevue. He started as a truck farmer at Midlakes, eventually retiring as a realtor. His father Hikotara had arrived in the Pacific Northwest in 1904, and left anti-Asian sentiment in Seattle to develop farmland on the other side of Lake Washington. The family eventually acquired ten acres, and farmed strawberries. Within a week of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Bellevue publisher Miller Freeman called for a meeting of Japanese community leaders, including Akira, to assure Freeman's self-appointed "Special Committee" of the loyalty of the local Japanese Americans. During the war Akira was interned in Idaho's Minidoka Relocation Center. After the war, he and his wife returned to Bellevue.