(bright music) (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Coming up on this special edition of Nebraska Stories, what began with one woman's quiet resolve to save a historic building in Scottsbluff became a shared mission as Nebraskans of Japanese heritage joined together to preserve Japanese Hall and the story of their ancestors.

- We are saving this legacy for our children because I want my children and the people of the valley to know what great support they received from the people of this area.

- [Steve] He was proud to be an American.

He was very loyal to Nebraska too.

He just felt a love for the country.

- [Vickie] There were quite a few Japanese Americans that were living in western Nebraska.

So exciting.

Yes.

(dramatic music) (upbeat music) (solemn music) - [Narrator] In a place called Sugar Valley, where the land holds echoes of the past, there lies a story long overlooked.

A story of a people who helped shape the very foundation of Nebraska.

But unlike those who followed the Great Platte River Road from the east, these newcomers arrived from the west.

Japanese immigrants who came as railroad workers.

They were mostly young, single men eager to earn money and return to Japan.

By 1910, work on the railroad had come to an end, and approximately 500 Japanese found themselves unemployed.

Some pushed on to Omaha to work in the stockyards, but others became contract laborers in a new industry that had already taken root in the North Platte River Valley, sugar beets.

(solemn music) They settled in rural areas becoming successful in farming and in business.

They married and had children.

Yet today, only faint traces of their story remain.

That is why this simple white building holds profound significance for their descendants.

- [Vickie] I had gone to a celebration of life at Japanese Hall and found out that there were pictures of my grandparents on the wall.

I found out that my grandfather in 1928 helped to build that hall.

(solemn music) - [Narrator] Built by Japanese immigrants, Japanese Hall served as a place where people gathered for social and cultural events.

(upbeat music) - Gonna hold that?

- I think so.

(cheerful music) - [Narrator] One of the final activities held at the hall was the annual Friendly Circle Bizarre.

-[Nancy] We always did the food, but when we started that, that was a big drawing crowd.

And then of course we still have the baked sale and the canned goods and the vegetables.

And then we always work on that futon, that we have a raffle for sharing our culture because our churches and other clubs are not Japanese oriented.

And I think it's, it was, it's a fellowship and sharing of that culture.

(group chattering) -[Vickie] The Scottsbluff communities were very welcoming to the Japanese.

And I think there was a respect for the work ethic of the Japanese people and the honesty of the Japanese people.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] In the early 1950's when her parents moved to Scottsbluff to work at the popular Eagle Cafe, Vickie Sakurada Schaepler was just a year old.

And though her grandfather Tokuzo Sakurada helped build Japanese Hall, Vickie's parents were not members.

- [Vickie] Part of the reason that I didn't know about the hall is that there were actually two Japanese halls.

There were actually three.

There was also one in North Platte, but the two in Scottsbluff and Mitchell, Nebraska were closed during World War II.

And when they were reopened, they reopened the Mitchell Hall as the Episcopal Mission Church.

And the one in Scottsbluff remained a social hall.

So our family had always gone to activities at the Mitchell Hall, and therefore did not know as much about the one in Scottsbluff.

(gentle music) (leave rustling) - [Fred] When I was in young, in Colorado, when I went to schools, didn't know too much English 'cause we spoke Japanese in the house.

(water splashing) - [Narrator] The son of a farmer Fred Noboru Hara moved with his parents to Nebraska in 1935.

His earliest memories of the hall were as a boy, - They used to have a Japanese summer school in the basement, and they hired a teacher from Japan.

- [Narrator] Fred's parents were active members of Japanese Hall, but as a third generation of Japanese Americans moved away from the panhandle, membership declined.

- [Fred] There was not enough members to really utilize it.

It was sitting empty.

We haven't had meetings for years, so it was just taking money.

- When I attended that celebration for life in 2012, they were talking about demolishing that hall.

I just started visiting with people.

"What do you think?"

You know this Japanese Hall, they're talking about knocking it down.

"Do you think we can move it?"

"What do you think about moving that building?"

When I contacted the people that own the hall, they go, "Vickie, it's an old building."

Knock it down.

- Well, I thought she was biting off more than she could chew, but she's a go-getter.

- [Vickie] Some of their members also were a little skeptical, but in the end, they became my greatest champions.

But, that day they challenged me and said, if you can raise $50,000, then you can, you know, we will work on this.

And very shortly after that, I had $75,000.

- And- - [Narrator] Vickie immediately launched her grassroots campaign, inviting others to join the effort to save the hall.

People stepped in from across the state, sharing their expertise from engineering and logistics to a session in artifacts and raising public awareness.

And then in December, 2019, Japanese Hall was ready to make its journey to its new home at The Legacy of the Plains Museum in Gering.

- Never see the thought this day would come.

(upbeat music) - Just gonna happen.

- It's so exciting.

Yes, yes.

Oh, it's so exciting.

(upbeat music) (people chattering) (upbeat music) - [Vickie] Smile.

I am feeling fantastic.

I mean, this is a dream come true.

And we felt like the issei were looking down on us today.

- [Group Together] Banzai.

Banzai.

Banzai.

- [Group Member] Woo!

(gentle music) - [Narrator] In Japanese American communities, first generation immigrants are referred to as issei.

Most issei who came to the United States were generally from rural areas and had little money.

However, there is always an exception.

Hisanori Kano was from a noble family.

As a middle child, Hisanori could develop his own interest.

It was while studying agriculture at the University of Tokyo, that his family hosted renowned Nebraskan, William Jennings Bryan.

(gentle music) - [Steve] Bryan thought it would be great if Hiram would come to the United States and study the interrelationship between Japanese agriculture and agriculture in America.

- [Narrator] Upon graduating college, Hisanori Kano prepared to leave Japan with a recommendation from Bryan to study at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

(gentle music) Fluent in English, he adopted the name Hiram and began to bridge two worlds.

(wind blowing) (boat horn honking) in Nebraska, Hiram Kano earned a master's in agricultural economics in 1918.

A year later, he bought a farm near Litchfield.

And wed Aiko Nagai, a young woman from a prominent Japanese family.

(western music) In the early 1920's, the Nebraska State legislature twice considered laws banning Asian immigrants from owning farmland.

Kano successfully stopped the first attempt, but a second effort passed in 1921 as Nebraska's Alien Land Law.

Japanese immigrants were already denied a path to citizenship.

Now they were also barred from owning land.

During this time, Kano formed an alliance with Reverend George Allen Beecher, the Episcopal bishop serving western Nebraska, a man who would go on to change the course of Kano's life.

(western music) - [Steve] And they basically worked together to try to prevent that alien land law from coming to pass.

And at that time, Beecher and Kano became friends.

Hiram, you know, was a very religious person, a very intelligent person, a great communicator, and he basically wanted to help people.

- [Narrator] In 1925, Hiram Kano left farming to become a lay missionary for the Episcopal church, serving Japanese families in the North Platte River Valley.

In 1928, he became a deacon.

(gentle music) And in 1936, he was ordained a priest in the Episcopal church, serving 600 Japanese sugar beet farmers in Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, and Nebraska.

(gentle music) - [Steve] He was a brilliant man and he would've done well if he would've stayed in Japan, but he gave that all up to come over here.

In fact, he kind of took the steps of, you know, separating from his family to be independent, to come here to start a new life.

-(church bells clanging) -(choir vocalizing) - [Narrator] On the morning of December 7th, 1941, after leading Sunday mass, Father Hiram Kano was abruptly arrested by local police.

News had just broken that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, plunging the United States into World War II and sparking suspicion toward Japanese Americans.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) - [Nick] I just figured that they would just tear it down.

(upbeat music) But Vickie comes along and she just decided, you know, it should be preserved.

And when she first started, nobody, nobody really even backed her up to do this.

But as it got more involved, well then people started think this could happen.

(upbeat music) - [Vickie] There was this part of me that I wanted to save the history.

What's next is to begin to remodel the building.

(machines clanking) (election music) - [Narrator] Just three months later, elevated spirits were dashed as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world.

And with it came product shortages and shipping delays, disrupting business as usual and driving up costs.

- [Vickie] We felt like we were on a roll, and then COVID stops us.

I think all of us didn't know what to do with COVID.

And you all wondered, what's going to happen?

What am I going to be able to do?

Funding wise, there were fears about the needs that were coming out as a result of COVID.

- [Narrator] The first company contracted to build the exhibits didn't survive the pandemic.

There were other challenges, but there were also some unexpected positives.

- So for me, Zoom, even though I hated Zoom, I am not a technical person, but all of a sudden my team could meet each other.

I had, and my East West team was now one team.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Just over a year later, as the pandemic began to ease, Vickie and dedicated volunteers resumed gathering stories and cataloging artifacts.

One quest to document Japanese history in Nebraska, took them to the Cheyenne County Historical Society in Sydney.

There, they combed through files, searching for documentation of Japanese who worked at the World War II Army Munitions Depot.

- [Vickie] Probably breaking all the rules on what you're supposed to do.

- That's the hardest part of doing all this.

- I bet.

- Just keeping track - of what year you found it.

- Yeah.

- Putting it back where it belongs.

- [Vickie] Yeah, that's.

I have really loved chasing the history, sitting on the floor, going through books, records, trying to find just more about it.

Seeing their pictures on the wall that had been taken as kind of an advertisement to keep people coming into there to work because there was such a shortage of workers.

I found out that some of the people that I had worked with in the Scottsbluff area actually had family that had worked at the Sioux Ordinance Depot.

- They actually had, I think it was two destruction areas where they would actually take their ammo out and exploded.

In fact, where I grew up at about 10 miles to the southeast when they were doing that, the windows on our house would rattle.

- [Man] Oh my gosh, jeez.

(upbeat music) - I've never been out here before, so this is cool.

(gentle music) Oh yeah, it's open.

We're going in.

- This is fun.

- Oh my gosh.

- [Participant] Jump out and grab me.

(group speaking indistinctly) - [Narrator] At the Legacy of the Plains Museum, donated keepsakes and photos continue to pour in from the community.

- So we have some original pictures here and this one's in the hall and it looks like one of the theater groups, 'cause they're dressed in costume.

- [Participant] So these are when they had their productions.

- [Vickie] Yes.

So there was a theater at the end- - of the building.

- And those are some of the original curtains that we still have, right?

- Yes.

- We have the curtains of this.

So we still have a thing.

- [Narrator] Some treasures must be picked up and carefully transported.

After a series of pandemic setbacks, the transformation of the hall into a museum was back on track.

A new exhibit company came on board and Vickie and her team were discovering just how much history had to be woven into 1,400 square feet.

(gentle music) (airplane engine humming) (bomb crashing) It was just before 8:00 AM in Hawaii when the first bombs fell on Pearl Harbor.

In that moment, the United States was at war with Japan.

(gentle music) (church bells clanging) In Nebraska, Father Hiram Kano learned of the attack after leading Sunday services in North Platte.

(gentle music) At 4:00 PM, city police arrested him as he left the church.

(gentle music) - There was a lot of anger towards the Japanese, and of course he was the leader of the Japanese in Nebraska.

I read a comment in the files, you know, that someone said he was very suave, but he was a real gentleman and came across really well to people.

Great speaker.

(bars clanging) - [Narrator] The next day, he was secretly moved to Omaha.

A month later, a hearing at Fort Crook determined his fate.

Despite affirming his loyalty to the United States, Father Kano was labeled Class A, a potential threat.

That spring, he was sent to a relocation center.

The only Japanese American interned from Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming.

-(people chattering) -(pensive music) In total, 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed and imprisoned in remote camps across some of the country's harshest environments.

(gusts of wind blowing) - [Steve] The camp administrator in Santa Fe that talked about, he was always cooperative and helped, he ministered to American soldiers that were being held, AWOL.

He ministered to some German soldiers.

He ministered to about anybody that he ran into, and he held classes.

He taught nature.

He had a history classes.

I've read that his history classes, you know, were packed and he taught English to internees and he really spent a lot of time working in these camps to help the people.

- [Narrator] Held in four internment camps over two years, Father Kano was paroled in December of 1943 and returned to his family in Scottsbluff.

But with a war ongoing and with some calling for his re-interment, he was sent to Wisconsin for his safety.

(gentle music) - [Steve] The government decided that he should go to Nashotah House Theological Seminary.

- [Narrator] After completing parole under the Dean of Nashotah House, Father Kano returned to Nebraska following his graduation in 1946.

(gentle music) For years, racial laws barred him from becoming a citizen.

But the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 changed that.

And on May 5th, 1953, Hiram Kano and his wife Ivy became the first Japanese Nebraskans to gain United States citizenship.

(gentle music) - [Steve] He was proud to be an American.

He loved America and he stressed that in a lot of things he said.

And in the writings that was really I important to him.

And he was very loyal to Nebraska too.

He just felt a love for the country.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Father Kano and his wife began teaching naturalization classes and within two years, all issei in Nebraska became citizens.

Then in 1957, Father Kano retired and moved to a small farm in Colorado.

(gentle music) 30 years later, on October 24th, 1988, three months before his 100th birthday, Reverend Hiram Hisanori Kano passed away.

(gentle music) - [Steve] I think his legacy of service still lives on in different ways, but you know, his devotion to help people and I think Japanese Hall's legacy is, you know, they kept their community together.

That really helped the people make it through this journey.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) (audience applauding) - [Vickie] I have to tell you, this has been such a joy to work on this project.

Probably will get teary eyed just because every, there's so many people in this crowd that have contributed to this project.

(gentle music) From those that families have just given me encouragement, whose, you know, family stories have just touched my heart.

I want you to know that it's not just about Japanese and Japanese Americans, but it's also about those people who stood for and made the right decisions and supported our families.

And we are saving this legacy for our children because I want my children and your children and the people of the valley to know what great support they received from the people of this area.

- [Karen] My dad was born in Nebraska and the, there's my dad.

That's probably Jeanie, that's your grandmother.

Isn't that great?

That's, that's your- - Isn't that Jeanie?

- [Karen] Yeah.

I was looking at this exhibit 'cause my dad when he was a teenager, worked at Eagle Cafe when he was a kid.

My Aunt Jeanie and all her siblings, they were a major supporter.

I actually set up a Amazon account, so every time I bought from Amazon, it, the museum got, was a benefit.

So during the pandemic, like, hello Dolly, no brainer.

(laughing) (gentle music) - [Julie] Vickie described it as a labor of love and it really is a labor of love.

I think that everyone involved in it, they had a piece in this and they could give something that was necessary to the bigger projects.

And you also have the donors who do not have ties at all to the community.

But then they find interest in it.

They found, they find this is worth preserving.

- From our family to all of the families who are speaking in that room today is a check for $10,000 to go- (audience applauding) Thank you very much.

- [Julie] It took all of these different facets to make it happen.

(gentle music) - [Jun] I was mindful of the courage of the first generation of Japanese immigrant who came here.

Japanese people contributed, labored and the sugar beet agriculture 120 years ago.

Those Japanese immigrant are impressed by rich culture here, but also were only welcomed, accepted by local people as a community member.

So that's impressed me.

(gentle music) - [Vickie] This journey has been probably the best experience of my life, to preserve an Asian story that is so much a part of Nebraska.

(thoughtful music) This is a traditional breaking of the sake barrel.

What I did was I brought representatives of the many different families.

(gentle music) Go.

(group cheering) (indistinct chatter and laughter) - [Participant] Sorry governor.

(indistinct chatter and laughter) -- There we go.

-- Yeah!

(group applauding) - Come on in.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] After more than a dozen years and without taxpayer support, Japanese Hall now stands as a tribute to Nebraska's Japanese American legacy.

More than a building was saved.

A nearly forgotten history now has a home and a future.

- [Vickie] There's so many different stories that need to be shared.

So we're gathering those stories and we're connecting the dots to all the different places.

I love the chase.

You're missing something if you don't look for the rest of the story.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Watch more Nebraska Stories on our website, Facebook and YouTube.

Nebraska Stories is funded in part by Humanities Nebraska and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.

The Margaret and Martha Thomas Foundation and the Bill Harris and MarySue Hormel Harris Fund for the presentation of cultural programming.

(thoughtful music)