Building on a long tradition of Indigenous berry picking in the Puget Sound region, European Americans brought their preferred varieties of berries to the area as they settled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the first decades of the twentieth century, Japanese Americans were setting up family farms, based on practices in fertilization, irrigation, and crop rotation learned in Japan. While raced-based exclusionary laws prevented most from owning their farms, Japanese families found workarounds to overseeing farms through agreements with white landowners, leasing with cash, or putting the title of the farm in the name of their American-born children. The forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans from the West Coast during World War II ended this business for many of the Japanese American farmers, who were forced to abandon their crops, and often did not return.
Takeo Sakuma and his family began growing berries in Bainbridge Island in 1907 and expanded their efforts to the Burlington area in 1935. In 1942, shortly after the order to remove Japanese Americans from the region was given, Takeo and his family prepared to leave their farms. At the last minute eldest son Atsusa Sakuma, who was in charge of the Burlington farm, struck a handshake deal with local berry farmer Oscar Mapes and his son James to care for the farm. While they lost their property on Bainbridge Island during incarceration, the Sakuma family was able to return to Burlington after the war and reclaim their farm due to this agreement.
In this photo, Atsusa Sakuma's son Steve helps weigh strawberries during the first harvest of 2002 at Sakuma Brothers Farms, a season of seven-days-a-week work practiced on the family farm. As of 2024, the business continues to be run by the fourth generation of family.
Caption information source: "Berry Farming in Washington," by Eleanor Boba, HistoryLink.org Essay 21282. Caption information source: "About Us," Sakuma Bros., at www.sakumabros.com/about-us. Accessed on June 26, 2024. Caption information source: "Farming family weathers 60 years of change," by M.L. Lyke, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 12, 2002.
