Although male Japanese immigrants dominated at first, the number of Japanese women immigrating to the United States (including Pocatello) grew exponentially in the early-twentieth century as Japanese men in the United States wrote back to Japan sending a picture of themselves seeking a Japanese wife.[1] The women that were matched with these men through a matchmaker became known as “picture brides.” They battled different hardships than their male counterparts as they were expected to adapt quickly and seamlessly to new food, clothing, and culture.

As if being married to a man they had never met before arriving in the US wasn’t difficult enough, many white American women thought that the picture brides were “uncivilized” because their customs were so different. Because of these differences, schools such as the Yokohama Emigrant Training Center were set up for picture brides to learn “American” ways before leaving for the US to properly represent Japanese modernity.[2] Certain women’s Christian groups in the United States also provided training, which included English classes, proper sanitation techniques, and beauty techniques.[3] Local examples of pictures brides who dealt with culture shock and acclimatization help illustrate the amazing lives of these extraordinary women.

Miyoshi Okamura immigrated as a picture bride in 1914 at the age of twenty. When she arrived in Pocatello, instead of rice and fish she had to cook with potatoes and chicken, which she found disgusting because it was often eaten off the bone. Her husband Kameji also grew many new and different vegetable crops on their farm, owning and operating Okamura Gardens which Miyoshi was instrumental in continuing when Kameji died in 1930.[4]

Yuki Hirada shares the story of his mother, Sugi Baba, who was also a picture bride that came to Pocatello. He shares how she was a seamstress, though he doesn’t know where she picked this up.[5] This would have been a pretty difficult challenge because one of the first things Japanese picture brides were often taken to do when they arrived in the United States was to get a new wardrobe and change out of their kimonos.[6] Learning to sew a completely different style of clothing would have been quite a challenge for many picture brides.

The records of picture brides Koma Tominaga and Kane Fukura Shiozawa both demonstrate the adjustment difficulties of becoming a homemaker in the interior West, which was so wildly different from their native Japan. Koma was in charge of a household of all men until a sister-in-law joined her as a picture bride a couple years later.[7] Kane’s diary outlines her busy duties as a homemaker as she adjusted to western American customs in a new climate with no family nearby.[8]

Picture brides are important in the story of Japanese immigration not only because they ran households through cooking and cleaning and helped work on the farms, but also they allowed for Japanese culture to continue through their children. Miyoshi, Yuki, Koma, and Kane are all wonderful examples of many thousands of women that immigrated to the United States as picture brides. Without picture brides, Japanese workers would not have been able to put down roots in places such as rural Idaho and the unique heritage that these Japanese immigrants brought would not have the same influence they do today.

Felicia Thompson received her Bachelors of Arts from Brigham Young University in Humanities with an emphasis in Political Science. She is working on her Masters in History at Idaho State University with a plan to teach high school. Full sources for this article can be found in the resources section of this site under lesson plans as well as oral histories.

[1] Erika Lee, The Making of Asian America (New York Simon and Schuster 2016), 113.

[2] Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 56.

[3] Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 57.

[4] Julie Okamura, “Miyoshi Yokota Okamura: Japanese Picture Bride,” Discover Nikkei: Japanese Migrants and Their Descendants. Japanese American National Museum, June 20, 2018.

[5] Yuki Hirada Yokota, interview by Ronald James, December 6, 2003, JACL Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Eli M. Oboler Library, Idaho State University.

[6] Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (New York, NY: Back Bay Books, 1989), 73.

[7] Eric Walz, Nikkei in the Interior West Japanese Immigration and Community Building, 1882-1945 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012).

[8] Kane Fukura Shiozawa, "Diary of Kane Fukura Shiozawa, 1925 (The Year of the Ox)," translated by Harry Watanabe, scribed by George Shiozawa and Jo Ellen Whitelock.