John and Sumiko Kobayashi

Quick Facts

Significance:

Wyoming Homesteaders, Idaho Homesteaders

Place of Birth:

John - Ucon, ID Sumiko - Seattle, WA

Date of Birth:

John-May 28, 1920 Sumiko-November 19, 1921

Place of Death:

Ucon, ID

Date of Death:

John - April 28, 1998 Sumiko - December 12, 2006

Place of Burial:

Rupert, ID

Cemetery Name:

Minidoka Acequia Rupert Cemetary

John Yoshio Kobayashi was a Japanese-American man who was born in Idaho to Japanese immigrant parents in 1921. After graduating high school, Kobayashi served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Even in the face of racial prejudice, he served with valor in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

The 442nd was a famous unit composed almost entirely of second-generation American soldiers of Japanese ancestry (“Nisei”). The unit remains one of the most decorated in American military history, helping to win the war with their service in Europe. The Regiment was initially made up of 4,000 men and had to be replaced nearly 2.5 times over. About 14,000 men served, earning almost 10,000 Purple Hearts, as well as 21 Medals of Honor. In July 1946, President Harry Truman presented a Presidential Unit Citation to the 442nd, stating “You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice, and you have won.”

After Kobayashi returned from the war, he married Sumiko Dorothy Yagi. Sumiko was born in Seattle, Washington to first generation Japanese immigrant parents Genji and Ume Yagi in 1920. Though her parents were not naturalized citizens, Sumiko was granted citizenship per the ruling of U.S. v Wong Kim Ark, as a child born in the U.S. The Yagi family operated a small grocery store in Seattle.

Sumiko and her family experienced extreme racial prejudice and a sense of wartime hysteria. Like many Japanese Americans on the west coast, they were forced away from their homes and businesses, and sent to Minidoka Incarceration Center, in Idaho, as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. That Executive Order authorized the United States Army to remove all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast and imprison them without due process of law. More than 120,000 were held in these camps – the vast majority of whom were citizens born in the United States, like Sumiko and her younger siblings Sachiko and George.

By the Spring of 1942, Japanese Americans were given just days’ notice that they had to abandon their homes, their businesses, and the lives they had built for themselves. For business owners like the Yagis, that led to the euphemistically named “evacuation sales” – knowing that they had only days, prices were slashed – merchandise, groceries, houses, and cars were all sold, often for pennies on the dollar, as they were only allowed to bring what they could carry.

Following the war, Kobayashi and Yagi married and moved to Riverton, Wyoming, where they homesteaded as part of the Riverton Reclamation Project, under the 1902 Newlands Reclamation Act. Reclamation homesteading was established in areas where farming was impossible without extensive irrigation, which required federal money and planning to build the necessary expensive infrastructure. As a veteran, John received preference in the lottery drawing for the land, which he successfully proved up in 1952. However, due to a problem with the project, Kobayashi sold his homestead and instead relocated to the Minidoka Reclamation homestead project in Idaho. It must have been difficult for Sumiko to return to Minidoka, site of her family’s forced incarceration under Executive Order 9066. Despite the trauma she may have felt at returning to the area, they successful received a patent there in 1955, receiving 127 acres a few miles west of Minidoka. John and Sumiko lived on the land the rest of their lives.

Kobayashi Bureau of Land Management Homestead-Reclamation General Land Office Records