Wapato and the Yakima Valley's Japanese American Farmers

Wapato, in Washington's Yakima Valley, became home to one of the largest Japanese American farming communities in Washington State in the early twentieth century. Japanese immigrants and their American-born children transformed what had been sagebrush land into carefully irrigated orchards and hop yards, specializing in labor-intensive crops that required the intensive cultivation techniques Japanese farming families brought from Japan. By the nineteen thirties, Japanese American farmers were a major presence in the Yakima Valley's fields and orchards.

Then came Executive Order Nine Thousand and Sixty-Six in nineteen forty-two. Wapato's Japanese American families, along with over a hundred thousand others on the West Coast, were forcibly removed to incarceration camps, their farms and homes left behind, leased, or sold in a hurry. After the war, some families returned to find their land gone.

The community rebuilt, and Wapato today retains visible marks of that agricultural heritage.