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The Mukai Cold Process Fruit Barrelling Plant (also known as Mukai and Sons, Vashon Island Packing Company, or VIPCO) in Vashon, Washington, U.S., is a former fruit processing plant originally constructed and owned by the Japanese American Mukai family. In 1993 it became the first location associated with Japanese American history to be designated a King County landmark〔Carey Quan Gelernter, (Honoring A Pioneer -- Designation Of Mukai Strawberry Plant As A King County Landmark Reminds US Of The Contributions Of Early Japanese Immigrants ), ''Seattle Times'', 1993-11-19. Accessed online 2014-04-20.〕 and was listed the following year on the National Register of Historic Places. The National Park Service (NPS) describes the site as "a rare, intact example of a property associated with the history of Japanese American settlement in Washington."〔(Mukai Cold Process Fruit Barrelling Plant ), National Park Service, 2002. Accessed online 2014-04-20.〕 == History == Sources disagree about Barrelling Plant founder Denichiro Mukai's history; one newspaper source says he emigrated from Japan to San Francisco "at age 15 or 16… in about 1885";〔 a National Park Service (NPS) article says he came "from a farming community near Osaka, Japan, to San Francisco at the age of 15 in the late 19th century;〔 Mary Matthews, who wrote the King County Landmark Nomination for the property, says he was born in 1886 and jumped ship San Francisco in 1902.〔Mary Matthews, (History & Dates ), mukaifarmandgarden.com. Accessed online 2014-04-22.〕 The NPS says "Sometime after turning 21" he married Sato Nakanishi;〔 Helen Meeker dates their marriage to 1910;.〔Helen Meeker, (The Mukai House and Garden: A Very Vashon Story ), ''Vashon Loop'', 2012-07-18. Accessed online 2014-04-20.〕 Matthews does not give a marriage date, but says that in 1907–08 Denichiro Mukai, Sato, and Sato's sister Kuni Mukai arrived in Seattle.〔 Denichiro Mukai's first American employer, a wealthy sheep farmer, eventually sent him to school, where he learned English. His name became shortened to "Ben," then to the nickname "B.D." He worked subsequently in various jobs in San Francisco including as a police interpreter and head of an employment agency. B.D. and Sato Mukai moved north to Seattle after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. For a time they had a restaurant on Seattle's Fourth Avenue. B.D. later worked for Walter Bowen and Company, on Seattle's Western Avenue "Wholesale Row." There he became familiar with the strawberries grown on nearby Vashon Island; he and his wife—she now suffering from tuberculosis〔—moved to the island in 1910 to grow strawberries.〔 There were a number of other Japanese immigrants strawberry farmers on the island at the time, including the Sakai and Hoshi families. B.D. Mukai began as a tenant farmer but, exceptionally, one with enough money to hire other Japanese laborers and pickers.〔 He and his family never had to work the fields themselves.〔 A continual innovator, B.D. Mukai hired his own barge to get his berries to market in Seattle ahead of other growers.〔 Sato Mukai died May 1, 1921 of tuberculosis 〔Vashon News Record May 6, 1921〕 (in 1915, according to Meeker;〔 in 1922, according to Matthews〔〔(this photo ) on the mukaihouseandgarden.org site (accessed 2014-04-20) is captioned, "Possibly one of the last photographs of Sato, taken around 1918, when Masa was about seven years old. The family would still be working leased farmland." If the identification is correct, Meeker is mistaken about the date of Sato's death.〕) and B.D. married her sister Kuni, who had traveled with them to Seattle and worked there as a domestic.〔〔 In 1924 the Mukais set up their first barreling plant; preserving the berries in this manner allowed him to bypass the Seattle wholesalers and, instead, sell worldwide through large distribution companies such as John Sexton and Company. According to the NPS, this "revolutioniz() the industry";〔 Mukai could sell directly to makers of preserves and ice cream.〔 The Japanese-born Mukai couple could not own land in the United States, so in 1926 they purchased a 40-acre site (including the current Barrelling Plant site) in the name of their young son Masahiro ("Masa"), born 1911.〔〔 B.D. designed an American-style residence typical of the Pacific Northwest; Kuni designed a traditional Japanese ''tsukiyama'' (hill garden; see ''Japanese gardens'') next to it.〔 Masa went on to be a prominent figure in the strawberry industry. He received an engineering degree from Washington State University, developed new farming techniques, and working with the United States Department of Agriculture at the Spokane Street Cold Storage in Seattle was a pioneer of frozen fruit.〔 In 1931 Masa married Mamie Kushi; they had a son, Milton, the following year, but divorced in 1936.〔 In 1937 he married again, to Chiyeko Wakasugi whose family farmed strawberries on Bainbridge Island, an island in Puget Sound north of Vashon.〔 As Masa increasingly took over the business it became "Mukai and Son". The Mukai operation did well despite the Great Depression, employing 400 to 500 seasonal workers, including the pickers. Among these were Native Americans who came from Vancouver Island by canoe.〔 In 1938 the company was renamed as the Vashon Island Packing Company or VIPCO.〔〔Pamela J. Woodroffe, ''Vashon Island's Agricultural Roots: Tales of the Tilth As Told by Island Farmers'' (2002), iUniverse. ISBN 0595241336. p. 75. Citation for date 1938 for name change.〕 Eventually, the company's business became just canning and freezing rather than farming.〔 The business survived the Japanese American internment during World War II. Executive Order 9066 (issued February 19, 1942) ordered the relocation of all Japanese Americans living west of the Columbia River to internment camps. Masa Mukai had the good fortune to be a personal acquaintance of the Lieutenant Commander of the Western Defense Command, and was notified two weeks before the evacuation order, allowing him to move his family (himself, his wife, his son Milton and stepmother Kuni〔) voluntarily to Dead Ox Flats, Oregon, across the Snake River from Weiser, Idaho where Chiyeko's brother lived. His hauler Morris Dunsford operated the business in his absence; Masa Mukai worked in the seed industry in Idaho during the war years and, according to the NPS, "became a respected member of the community" there.〔 He overcame the anti-Japanese prejudices of the locals, introduced row crops in what had previously been primarily cattle country, and invented a seed harvester to capture seeds that would otherwise have been blown away by the area's strong winds.〔 After the war, the Mukais returned to Vashon, but the strawberry business there was no longer profitable.〔 Although he did build a packing plant on the mainland near the Canadian border in Lynden, Washington and leased another in Forest Grove, Oregon,〔 he drew more on his engineering skills and worked in areas such as the design of sewer systems and water distribution mains, pipeline construction and home building. He slowly sold off the Vashon properties; the plant itself was sold in 1969 to a bean sprout company, and has changed hands several times since then.〔 B. D. Mukai retired in 1935. By this time he and Kuni had divorced. He married for a third time, and traveled extensively.〔 According to Mary Matthews, the outbreak of World War II caught him in Hong Kong. He went to Japan, where he witnessed the bombing of cities and nearly starved to death. After the war, he experienced legal difficulties in returning to the U.S.〔 He eventually settled in Claremont, California.〔 In 1968 went back to Japan and told his son to sell his (B.D. Mukai's) California property and send him the balance of his bank accounts, with which he purchased and restored the family's ancestral home in Osaka, where he died in 1973.〔 Masa Mukai died in 1999.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mukai Cold Process Fruit Barrelling Plant」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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