Interviews

1. Family background

2. Driving 1930 Ford at age 12

3. Classified 4C - enemy alien

4. Inahara shunt

5. Encouraged to go to college

6. Father's career as a manjyu maker

7. Identified as Japanese ancestry

Inahara,Toshio

(b. 1921) Vascular surgeon

Family background

Initially, I was born in Seattle.

I*: What year was that?

In ’21. And we lived in Seattle…I don’t know how long. But about 3 years later, we went to Japan for about 6 months. My third brother was born there and then we came back and then we lived in Seattle and Portland for a while because dad was working as a…he was a manju-ya. He made manju – kashi-ya. He trained in Japan and was an excellent kashi-ya. Anyway, he opened his store – the Fugetsu – in Tacoma and had a very successful business. Then finally, in 1931, he had 4 sons. Decided that he was going to move to the country because he wanted his boys to grow up in the country rather than the city. So we moved here to Oregon.

That’s me, Ken, Yosh, and Takashi -- the 4 boys who were living in Tacoma at the time. That’s my father. We think taken in about 1918. He sold his store and decided to be a farmer and he had no experience as a farmer and he had a friend here who was from the same ken (prefecture) – Gifu-ken in Japan – and that was his contact. So he moved…we moved to a place called Hillside, which is about 30 miles west of Portland and got a 30-acre to raise strawberries.

* “I” indicates an interviewer (Akemi Kikumura Yano).

confectioneries families Fugetsu (confectionery store) Gifu Prefecture Japan manju strawberries

Date: December 6, 2005

Location: Oregon, US

Interviewer: Akemi Kikumura Yano

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum.

Interviewee Bio

Toshio Inahara was born in Seattle, Washington, the first of four brothers. At age three, he moved with his family to Japan, returning after six months to Tacoma where his father established a successful Japanese confectionery, “Fugetsu.” Toshio’s father wanted his sons to grow up in the country, so the family moved to a farm 30 miles west of Portland, Oregon, in 1931.

In response to Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, West Coast Japanese Americans were ordered to evacuate to Assembly Centers, but the Inahara family obtained a travel permit to relocate inland to Ontario, near the Eastern Oregon border. Toshio volunteered for service in the US Air Force in 1942, but was rejected because of his Japanese ancestry.

After two years of family farming, Toshio was accepted at the University of Wisconsin, where he studied pre-med courses, eventually earning his M.D. in 1950 from the University of Oregon. Following internship and residency, he trained in vascular surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and then returned to Portland to establish a private practice and serve as a clinical instructor in surgery at the University of Oregon Medical School.

Dr. Inahara is one of the world’s foremost authorities on carotid endarterectomy and is co-inventor of the Pruitt-Inahara Carotid Shunt.(December 6, 2005)