EXHIBITS / ATTRACTIONS

Completing the Story (Resettlement) Exhibit

Mari Kawakami Terada and Yuri Kawakami Uchiyama setting table at the Buddhist Church Annex Hostel. "During the winter to supplement his income, my father worked with a group of other sharecroppers. They would go from orchard to orchard pruning fruit trees for the fruit farmers in the Santa Clara area. In this picture taken in 1951, my father is standing second from the right. Times were still difficult, but many families began sharecropping instead of just working on the farm for weekly wages. My father was able to grow strawberries and share the profit with the land owner. With sharecropping strawberries, our family moved every few years to a different farm in the Santa Clara Valley." -Richard Otsuji

'My grandfather, Torahiko Kawakami, managed the hostel at the Buddhist Church Annex. After their release from the camps, many Japanese Americans had no home, job or community to come back to. In this collection of photographs and written personal memories, local community members tell how they rebuilt their lives and raised their families in the postwar environment here in the Santa Clara Valley. The hostel was set up for the heads of the household, who came back just for the resettlement by opening/cleaning their homes or find a house/apt. to rent. After the hostel closed, our multi-generational family stayed briefly, with three other families, in the JACL Bldg. on N. Fifth St.' - Mari Terada"