Looking After Minidoka

By Neil Nakadate, 2013, Indiana University Press, 236 pages
Reviewed by Ken Bilderback, December 30, 2020

“Looking After Minidoka,” by Neil Nakadate, published in 2013 by Indiana University Press, 236 pages

I’m writing a book about Gaston and Wapato Lake, which was a center of Japanese-American culture until internment destroyed it all.

In my search for stories I read “Looking After Minidoka” by retired Iowa State University English professor Neil Nakadate. It was a longshot, but many Wapato Lake farmers were sent to the Minidoka concentration camp, as was Nakadate’s family.

Throughout the book, Nakadate documents the abuse of both Japanese and Chinese immigrants, whose cultures often were at odds but which found common ground on American soil.

His book dances around all the issues I’m following but never makes a direct reference to Gaston. Until, that is, the closing paragraph.

Spoiler alert: It involves him visiting Portland to take his mother on a tour of her life. The tour ends at the palatial estate of Joseph Gaston in Portland’s West Hills, which he built after exploiting Asian workers in the town that bears his name. Gaston became the metaphor.

This is why I never give up on a good book.