Oregon Public Broadcasting

In several months the Seattle Mariners report to Arizona for spring training. But the team's new manager, Don Wakamatsu, is already busy. He's charged with turning around a team that lost one-hundred-and-one games last season.  Two weeks ago, he said he was ready.

Wakamatsu: "I welcome the challenge, to bring a world champion to Seattle and to the fans of the Seattle Mariners. Our goal as an organization is to come together and put a product on the field that everybody will be proud of."

Wakamatsu's the first Asian-American to coach a major league team. He's a native Northwesterner, with deep roots in Hood River. April Baer has this report on the remarkable family history of Don Wakamatsu.

Ruth's 91 this year. Her husband James is 93, but they still have clear memories of Don as a kid.

James Wakamatsu: "Don was always a little bit different. When he was a five or six, he and his folks were living on the other side of Vancouver. He got scolded for something. He decided to come to Hood River on a bicycle!"

The police picked him up near Multnomah Falls, for riding without a light.

James Wakamatsu: "He had a lot of guts, even when he was little!"

Don Wakamatsu's rise in the major leagues is even more remarkable when you know how far his family has come.

The Wakamatsus settled in Oregon four generations ago, part of the wave of Japanese people who came to build the railroads of the West, and stayed to work the orchards of Hood River. Relations with white neighbors weren't the greatest. But they had friends. Then World War Two broke out and the government came knocking.

Ruth Wakamatsu: "They told us. They said they were going to check our homes, I don't know what they were looking for."

James and Ruth Wakamatsu were among thousands of American citizens stripped of all they owned, and sent to internment camps, because of their race. 

James got a work permit, and spent most of the war years doing tough agricultural jobs around Montana and Nebraska, before being drafted.  Ruth was on her own with one small daughter, and another baby on the way. She was sent from the Portland Assembly Center, to California, Arkansas, then Colorado --  a total of five destinations in four years.

Ruth   Wakamatsu: "And they'd always send us in an old train, you know, they used to burn coal in those days. And you ought to see the kids when we got there, their faces were dirty, black."

Ruth Wakamatsu's attitude toward the experience is not uncommon. It was a painful time, but she did the best she could to get through it. During this dark chapter of Hood River's history, a group of locals agitated to try to keep Japanese-Americans from returning. But after the war, the Wakamatsus decided to return.

James Wakamatsu: "We had a place here that we had purchased. We were trying to build a farm up. It's the only place we could think of to come back to."

And amid the hostility, a few white neighbors were still friendly....The Wakamatsus bought a crude shed from a Portland contractor, to serve as their first post-war house. Ruth remembers Japanese friends saying they'd stayed in that very structure on their way home from the detention camps.

Ruth Wakamatsu: "This part of the house is one of the barracks. Just up to where the mirror is in here. We replaced both windows. We had to add kitchen, a bathroom, and two bedrooms."

It wasn't in great shape, but as with so many other things, James and Ruth made the best of it.   They kept working the orchards, raising children, and grandchildren, including Don.

James and Ruth say they couldn't be more proud, and look forward to an RV trip to SafeCo Field to watch him manage the Mariners when the season opens in the spring.