OHS Research Library, Yasui Family papers, Coll 949, box 40, folder 2.

Portland, OR — The Oregon Historical Society (OHS) has completed work on an LSTA Competitive Grant to translate a large selection of the Japanese material in the Yasui family papers, a manuscript collection preserved in OHS’s research library. This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the State Library of Oregon. 

Dating from 1873 to 2023 and crossing five generations, the Yasui family papers consists of over 20 linear feet of personal correspondence, original family documents and diaries, research files and historical writings, advocacy records, and photographs — about one-fifth of which is written in pre–World War II Japanese that is no longer widely spoken or written. Homer Yasui donated the family papers to the Oregon Historical Society in late 2022, and OHS recognized the historical value of this collection and the need to translate the content before it became inaccessible to researchers.

OHS also cares for the Yasui Brothers business records, a large manuscript collection also donated by Homer Yasui in 1991. Together, the Yasui collections document the experiences and contributions of Hood River businessman and noted community leader Masuo Yasui, Homer’s father, and his family during the first four decades of the twentieth century — a history that is underrepresented among archives. 

The Yasui family papers provide a rare window into Japanese American history prior to World War II, including Masuo’s experiences as a 16-year-old arriving in the United States in 1903 and his desires to make something of his life by settling in Oregon. The collection also documents family life and community relations in Hood River and the effects of World War II–era forced removal and incarceration of those of Japanese ancestry, including second-generation (Nisei) family members’ activism and advocacy work from the 1940s through today.

The grant work to translate and digitize the accounts of first-generation (Issei) members of the Yasui family makes their experiences accessible for the first time, and widely discoverable to anyone with internet access. This access will help improve and deepen understanding of the broader history of the Japanese American community in Oregon. Researchers can also access objects that Homer Yasui donated to OHS’s museum collection online through the OHS Museum Collection Portal.

“Collaboration was a critical element for this project,” said OHS Deputy Library Director for Collections Dana Miller. “Our success was built on the work of a small team of expert translation consultants led by Yoko Gulde. That connection was facilitated by an earlier project partnership with the Japanese American Museum of Oregon and has also allowed us to foster important relationships with the Japanese American community.”

Researchers from across the country have already visited OHS to use both collections. OHS has also used the primary resources translated during the grant in popular professional development workshops and a document-based question unit for grades 6–12 titled, “Hood River Nikkei in the 1920s.” OHS has also published two entries, “Letter from Masuo Yasui to Taiitsuro Yasui and Renichi Fujimoto, December 12, 1907” and “Masuo Yasui’s study notes for U.S. citizenship exam, 1953,” on the Oregon History Project, one of OHS’s four digital history projects that provides historical context on select items from OHS’s museum and research library collections. 

Over the coming years, OHS plans to digitize additional English-language documents and photographs from the Yasui family papers, including letters, speeches, and photographs along with meticulous historical research and writing by Homer and other family members. Additionally, an exhibition focused on the Yasui collections at OHS is in development and will open in June 2025.  

About the Oregon Historical Society

For more than a century, the Oregon Historical Society has served as the state’s collective memory, preserving a vast collection of objects, photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, films, and oral histories. Our research library, museum, digital platforms, educational programming, and historical journal make Oregon’s history open and accessible to all. We exist because history is powerful, and because a history as deep and rich as Oregon’s cannot be contained within a single story or point of view. 

DOWNLOAD PRESS KIT: https://bit.ly/crossingboundaries-presskit 

Portland, OR — The history of transgender people in the West is an incomplete one, marked by sensational popular accounts and prejudice. Had these distorted portraits of transgender people not become visible, however, little might be known about them at all. Documentation of queer people’s lives is often neglected, intentionally overlooked, or destroyed after their deaths. Without extensive written documentation, it is easy to assume that trans people did not exist in significant numbers prior to the modern era. This is not true. 

Now on view at the Oregon Historical Society, Crossing Boundaries: Portraits of a Transgender West shares stories of individuals who moved West and changed their activities, clothing, and behaviors to lead lives that were better aligned with their sense of self. On view in downtown Portland through January 5, 2025, Crossing Boundaries is a powerful traveling exhibition created by the Washington State Historical Society in collaboration with Dr. Peter Boag, a historian, author, and educator at Washington State University–Vancouver. 

Dr. Peter Boag will also give a curator talk on Thursday, November 14 at the Oregon Historical Society on his scholarship about transgender people in the American West, originally shared in his 2011 book, Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past.

The exhibition highlights the lives of specific individuals who did not conform to the gender norms of the turn of the twentieth century, connecting their stories to aspects of today’s LGBTQ+ community. These individuals were the public face of the LGBTQ+ community; they were the ones who appeared in the press (for reasons elaborated in the exhibition) and thus were the most widely recognized and accessible examples of LGBTQ+ identities during the late 1800s and early 1900s. While today we might think of the people represented in the exhibition as “transgender,” that term did not exist during their lifetimes. 

Because written documentation is sparse, it has sometimes been assumed that trans people did not exist prior to the modern era; however, transgender people have existed in the West for thousands of years. Many Native cultures recognized three, four, or more genders. 

“One of the challenges in organizing this exhibition was locating stories of transgender people in newspaper, library, and photographic archives,” said Gwen Whiting, lead exhibitions curator at the Washington State History Museum. “While there were many people who transitioned in the West, often we found that those stories had been lost, either through intentional erasure by communities or family members, or because the individuals left few personal accounts and belongings behind. For example, Dr. Alan Hart requested that all personal correspondence and documents be burned upon his death.”

Alan L. Hart was an Oregon physician, researcher, and writer and one of the first female-to-male transgender persons to undergo a hysterectomy in the United States and live the remainder of his life as a man. Though he desired to live his life quietly, he frequently had to leave jobs and homes for fear of discrimination when he was recognized and exposed. Despite a life of challenges, Hart contributed greatly to the medical field, notably to tuberculosis research. He helped to contain the spread of the disease in both the Pacific Northwest and Connecticut, and programs based on Hart’s studies saved thousands of lives. 

Sensationalism also played a role in which stories were preserved, resulting in uneven collecting of trans history by museums, researchers, and academic institutions. Some of the items on view in Crossing Boundaries are authentic to the subjects’ stories, but many of them are representative items that provide historical content. For example, a shimmering relic of 1920s Portland is a dress from OHS’s museum collection displayed as an example of female-presenting clothing from the 1920s. 

Acceptance is also a central theme in this exhibition. All of the people featured struggled with finding contemporary acceptance, just as many queer people struggle today. However, even though sensational press accounts and negative public opinion made this difficult, there were some transgender individuals who found a place in communities in the West. For many of them, acceptance lasted for long periods of time, even when others around them held strong suspicions about their assigned genders. 

The Oregon Historical Society’s museum is open daily in downtown Portland, from 10am to 5pm Monday through Saturday and 12pm to 5pm on Sunday. Admission is free every day for youth 17 and under, OHS members, and residents of Multnomah County. Learn more and plan your visit at ohs.org/visit.

About the Oregon Historical Society

For 125 years, the Oregon Historical Society has served as the state’s collective memory, preserving a vast collection of objects, photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, films, and oral histories. Our research library, museum, digital platforms, educational programming, and historical journal make Oregon’s history open and accessible to all.We exist because history is powerful, and because a history as deep and rich as Oregon’s cannot be contained within a single story or point of view. 

Book arts, courtesy IPRC

Portland, OR — Visitors of all ages are invited to a free Community Day program at the Oregon Historical Society on Saturday, September 14, highlighting the current exhibition, A Fountain of Creativity: Oregon’s 20th Century Artists and the Legacy of Arlene Schnitzer.

Presented in partnership with the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC), this program will feature book-making demos and the opportunity for visitors to make their own pocket notebooks to capture their thoughts about the works of arts on display in the exhibition. Participants will come away with an understanding of the tools required for softcover bookbinding and will have the opportunity to learn how to create a softcover book with a pamphlet stitch, a folded zine, and the option to create saddle-stapled notebooks. 

This workshop is presented by Harper Quinn, part of the staff leadership collective at the IPRC. She works in collage and print and is the author of Coolth, a full-length collection of poetry, as well as the chapbooks Unnaysayer and Thrownness, a collaboration with artist Jillian Barthold. 

This is a family-friendly activity appropriate for a range of ages and abilities that will be available from noon to 4pm. Admission to OHS is free all Saturday; museum hours are 10am to 5pm. 

This community program was designed to give visitors an opportunity to have a tactile experience with art while also considering the history of art and artists in Portland that is explored in A Fountain of Creativity. During the early twentieth century, the arts community in Oregon was small, isolated, and offered few opportunities for artists to exhibit and sell their work. While the Portland community valued public engagement with arts and culture, local artists were isolated from the wider national art community due to a lack of commercial gallery space to show and sell their work.

Decades later in 1961, Arlene Schnitzer, along with her mother Helen Director and friend Edna Brigham, started the Fountain Gallery. The commercial art gallery, named after its location near the Skidmore Fountain, became a hub for Pacific Northwest modern artists and helped raise the status of the Portland art scene.

Arlene Schnitzer was quoted as saying “a city without an art community has no soul.” Honoring her legacy and influence on the history of Portland, A Fountain of Creativity features a range of bold, evocative, and influential works created by Pacific Northwest artists from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation — many on public display for the first time. 

The first part of this two-part exhibition will run through January 2, 2025, and features artworks from 1915 into the early 1960s with cultural and historical context on the Pacific Northwest arts scene prior to the opening of the Fountain Gallery in 1961. The second part, on view from November 1, 2024, through May 4, 2025, will highlight many of the artists who worked closely with Arlene Schnitzer throughout the Fountain Gallery’s 25 years supporting the local arts scene.

“Art gives you a different perspective on history,” says OHS Curator of Exhibitions Megan Lallier-Barron, “People’s lived experiences at a point in time are captured and preserved in art and allow us a means for reflection and interpretation in the present.”

DOWNLOAD PRESS KIT: https://bit.ly/fountainofcreativity 

About the Oregon Historical Society

For 125 years, the Oregon Historical Society has served as the state’s collective memory, preserving a vast collection of objects, photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, films, and oral histories. Our research library, museum, digital platforms, educational programming, and historical journal make Oregon’s history open and accessible to all.We exist because history is powerful, and because a history as deep and rich as Oregon’s cannot be contained within a single story or point of view. 

About the Independent Publishing Resource Center  

The IPRC is a community organization and print and publishing resource center that supports writers and artists by providing educational opportunities and access to a shared studio space equipped with publishing tools and printmaking resources suited for the creation of short-run publications including zines, chapbooks, comics, art books, prints, posters, fliers, buttons, and other print ephemera. Its mission is to provide affordable access to space, tools, and resources for creating independently published media and artwork and to build community and identity through the creation of written and visual art.

About the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation

Founded in 1997, the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation collection, one of the most notable in North America, functions as a living archive to preserve art for future generations and share it with the public through groundbreaking exhibitions, publications, and programs. Today, the Foundation has organized over 160 exhibitions and has loaned thousands of works to over 120 museums, dramatically improving access to art, especially in underserved communities.