PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Henry Sakamoto, a legend in Portland’s Japanese American community and the man responsible for bringing the beloved cherry trees to the city’s waterfront, died in late November, his family announced on Friday. He was 98.
The civic leader was born on Jan. 27, 1927 in Portland to Hantaro and Hisano Sakamoto, and lived through the Great Depression in his childhood, and at the age of 15, along with his family, was forcibly incarcerated during World War II alongside more than 120,000 Japanese Americans.
“I was too young at 15 years old and I didn’t realize the seriousness of erasing our citizenship, our American citizenship and forcing us into internment, or jail, so to speak,” Sakamoto told KOIN 6 News earlier this year. “We were behind barbed wire fences and under the security guard of the United States Army.”
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Post-World War II, Sakamoto graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in business administration and joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he worked for 32 years managing government grain inventories, strengthening ties between Oregon’s grain industry and Japanese markets…