Nikkei in the Interior West: Japanese Immigration and Community Building, 1882–1945 by Eric Walz

Abstract

 OHQ vol. 114, no. 2 through the turbulent times of the 1960s and 1970s to the calmer waters of the present. She begins with a profile of Willie Frank, Sr., or “Gramps,” who taught his son the ways of the Nisqually people and inspired him to fight for their rights under the Treaty of Medicine Creek.Heffernan provides just enough historical and legal context to orient general readers, but her relatively thin research on the period before Billy’s birth causes some minor errors and problematic generalizations.In particular, she downplays the fact that Northwest Indians had intentionally violated state law in order to generate test cases decades before the dramatic protests of the 1960s made national news. Although the Frank family was crucial in attracting that attention, they acted within a larger tradition of resistance that stretched back fifty years and reached from Puget Sound to the Columbia River. Heffernan effectively captures the chaotic and sometimes comic scenes that accompanied the “fish wars” on the Nisqually and other Northwest rivers. Drawing extensively from interviews with Frank and other participants in the struggle, she chronicles the escalating battles that culminated in the controversial Boldt Decision in U.S. v. Washington (1974). At times, her reliance on oral history gives the narrative an episodic feel, as if readers are listening to a conversation among people who already know the whole story. It also produces some priceless quotations and anecdotes,such as the revelation that the steelhead Marlon Brando was arrested for catching had actually come from a local seafood company. Those personal stories are complemented by dozens of photographs from tribal archives and private collections, including those of Billy Frank and his close friend Hank Adams. Heffernan gives due credit to Adams, whose involvement with the National IndianYouth Council helped link the local fishing rights struggle to the national Red Power Movement. She also includes a few erstwhile enemies,notably formerWashington governor Dan Evans, who initially opposed the tribes but ultimately aided their efforts to restore the salmon. The second half of the book celebrates Frank’s shift from confrontation to cooperation . A consummate “bridge builder,” he overcame both political obstacles and personal tragediestobecomealeadingproponent of collaborative conservation (p. 175). Frank helped broker the United States–Canada Treaty (1985) and the Timber, Fish, and Wildlife Agreement (1986);and under his leadership,the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission developed into a major player in regional salmon politics. Divisions within and among tribes are alluded to but never fully explained in Heffernan’s account,which steadfastly accentuates the positive ; yet she does not sugarcoat the challenges still facing the fish. As habitat loss continues and the climate warms, Frank laments that everyone is “still talking about the salmon problem. It never seems to get done, and we’re running out of time”(p. 260). Frank has never been one to quit, though, and Heffernan’s book honors his dedication to ensuring a future for native fish and Native cultures in the Northwest. Andrew H. Fisher The College of William & Mary Nikkei in the Interior West: Japanese Immigration and Community building, 1882–1945 by Eric Walz University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2012. Maps, photos. 264 pages. $50.00 cloth. You should read this book. The story of Japanese Americans on the Pacific Coast during the first half of the twentieth century often has been told. Usually, the sequence of topics goes like this: a background on Meiji Japan; the forces that led to emigration; the frontier period when Japanese men traveled theAmeri-  Reviews can West and worked in the forests and fields; the era of settling, when they brought wives, made farms and businesses, and had children; the rise of the second generation; incarceration during World War II; and denouement. On the other hand, the story of the smaller numbers of Japanese Americans who lived inland from the coast, in places such as Utah, Colorado,andWyoming,has seldom been told. Eric Walz joins a very short list of historians — Hiram Kano (A History of the Japanese in Nebraska, 1984), Thomas Walls (The Japanese Texans, 1987), Bill Hosokawa (Colorado’s Japanese Americans, 2005), and Robert T. Hayashi (Haunted by Waters, 2007) — who have addressed the subject. Walz is...