NISHIMOTO, Richard Shigeaki (1904-1956)

He was a public figure, community leader and played a secret role as a JERS field worker for the University of California.

 

Richard S. Nishimoto

     Richard S. Nishimoto, was born 8/23/1904 in Tokyo, Japan, and immigrated to the United States in 1921 and lived with his parents in San Francisco. He attended Lowell High School from 1921-1925,  and attended Stanford University  from 1925-1929, earning a bachelor degree in the School of Engineering.  He had also completed courses in sociology, economics, psychology and political science. During the summer, he worked in the Sacramento  Valley with a large group of migrant  Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Filipino farm laborers on a large fruit orchard. After graduating in Engineering in 1929, and learned that the reason he was not offered an engineering job was because of his "face."
     Richard went to Los Angeles where he worked operating an insurance brokerage firm.  He occasionally worked as an Japanese/English interpreter for the court system in Los Angeles. He met his future wife, Yae Imai, while in southern California, and they were married in San Francisco on 8/22/1931.  In 1934, they were living in Gardena with their 2 year-old daughter, Roberta.  He eventually became owner of a fruit and vegetable market in Gardena. 

     In May 1942, 38 year-old Richard Nishimoto and his wife and daughters, Marcia (8 yrs) and Roberta (10 yrs), were evacuated to the Poston internment camp (block 45-2-C). Nishimoto worked as an assistant for the Bureau of Sociological Research* (BSR) in June 1942 on the recommendation of Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study* (JERS) staff member who was secretly living as a Poston internee, Tamie Tsuchiyama.  From June-September 1942, Nishimoto was the foreman of the "firebreak gang", responsible for keeping the grounds clear of construction site trash, and  he was elected Block Manager of Poston block 45 in February 1943.  Later, he was elected councilman for Poston block 45. By 1944, Dorothy Thomas, director of JERS, enlarged the scope of his work. 
     In July 1945, Richard Nishimoto was forced to leave Poston  after Dillion S. Myer began to suspect that he was on the JERS staff, and had him investigated. Nishimoto remained working with the project at the University of California in Berkeley.  Dorothy Thomas retained him as her sole postwar research assistant and he worked as a staff member of JERS until 1948.  

    Nishimoto co-authored with Dorothy S. Thomas, The Spoilage. University of California Press, 1946.

     In 1952, he worked as a consultant at Dorothy Thomas' request on another JERS- related publication, Prejudice, War and the Constitution,  which was finally published in 1954.    

     Following the war, he remained estranged from his family. On 5/31/1956, while in San Francisco working as a night watchman in a hotel, he died alone.
    Three of Nishimoto's unpublished works were published in the book edited by Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Inside an American Concentration Camp: Japanese American Resistance at Poston, Arizona.  Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. 1995

*NOTE: For more information about  Bureau of Sociological Research (BSR) and Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study (JERS), visit:
<http://postoncamp.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html#1770939051405403197>