Artwork by Jeremy Okai Davis/Portland Mercury

From Portland Mercury, December 11, 2013 - Oregon's First African Americans , by Joe Streckert:

"Vanport's construction was of the cheap and temporary kind (the locals called the prefabricated dwellings "cracker-box houses"), and for much of the 1940s, Portland's first sizable black population was separated from the town proper by economics, administration, and the river. The town was destroyed by a flood in 1948, and many refugees from the disaster settled in the Albina neighborhood. More than 100 years after initial settlement, Portland finally had an African American population of appreciable size. The influx of that population didn't come about, though, because Portland had liberalized or become more open. Portland's first large black neighborhood materialized because a force of nature destroyed an industrial ghetto."

The Vanport Childcare centers are not the same childcare centers that Kaiser opened at the shipyards-common mistake so I had to get that out of the way. PPS put Kx2 classrooms in the community centers/childcare centers" in Guilds Lake and I assume at Vanport. Back to the question about the Helen Gordon Center building, that history is connected to Fruit and Flower. Fruit and Flower served the victims of the Vanport Flood in the trailers at Guild's Lake. This image I believe has alot to to with the professionalization of nursery staff and school staff-federal government had higher standards on training education for those jobs and had conflicts with PPS. ~ Dr.Tanya Gossard (seen on her Facebook page)

On Saturday December 5th, we hosted a screening of new multimedia oral histories on Vanport, produced by University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication Master’s Program students, and by our volunteers. Around 200 people gathered to learn more about this forgotten piece of history from the voices of those who witnessed it.

For all of us involved in the Vanport Mosaic, one of our most cherished aspects of the project is seeing the former Vanport residents who attend and enjoy our public events; many of the people we are working to honor tell us how special it makes them feel to see their stories, and to be recognized. We tell these stories WITH them, not about them. How they feel about the way their experience is represented is what fuels this project.

Mrs. Carolyn Hinton worked with Rachel Bracker and Tiara Dornell to record her fond memories of her childhood in Vanport after moving there from Arkansas. After the screening of her multimedia oral history she wrote us this kind note: “A very enjoyable production that brought back so many memories. I am in awe of how well done the film is. Everything seems to match up so well.”
 

To tell a story in such a collaborative and inclusive way takes months, even though what you end up seeing is a 5-7 minute long video. From an hour-long interview, (sometimes with multiple sessions, if we feel we missed something important), to transcribing, to brainstorming which pieces of the interview(s) will best convey the story each survivor wants to share, to finding the right archival photos to enhance the narrative…

It is all worth it. Watch Mrs. Carolyn Hinton’s story, and you will agree.

To “match up so well” Rachel worked on it until the night before the screening. "Mrs. Hinton had a lot of old photos of Vanport," she told us, "but I didn't even think of ask her of she still had photos of Arkansas, where she was born. She only lived there a few years, and I remembered her telling me that most of her photos were lost in the flood. I spent hours looking for archival photos in library databases, but I wasn't sure whether the photos I found there accurately portrayed her childhood surrounding. "It took Rachel a phone call to Mrs. Hinton to solve the problem. Sure enough she did have photos of her life in Arkansas, and Rachel was able to rush to her home with a scanner and add the accurate images to the video, just on time for the screening.

You might wonder what motivates our volunteer to dedicate so much time and care throughout this process. Stories told this way, WITH and not "about", are gift for those who tell them and those who receive them. Tiara, who interviewed Mrs. Hinton with Rachel, shared with us that "working on Ms. Hinton's story in the context of this larger Vanport project has meant so much to me as an African American woman, and as a new Oregonian."

If I didn’t scare you off and you are interested in learning this process, sign up for our FREE WORKSHOP (dates TBA).

“Last night I really felt like a celebrity. And I just came home so elated.” That is what Mrs. Violet Young told us on Sunday, the day after we shared her oral history ("Violet and the photographer", produced by Meredith Lawrence) at the screening at PCC, with an audience of about 200 people.  As she walked up the aisle people put their hands on her arms and shoulder “just recognizing me,” she said.

An audience of about 200 people gathered on 12/5/2015 to watch Vanport Mosaic multimedia oral histories at Portland Community College.

Thank you to each and everyone of you who showed up to watch our new multimedia oral histories on Vanport, and honored the experience of those who shared their memories. As a city and as a State we forgot about Oregon’s second largest city that was home, at its peak, to 40,000 people who came from all over the U.S. to build a new life, attracted by job opportunities and affordable housing.  But workhop after workshop, screening after screening, we are showing that as a community we are committed to re-discover and remember this sociological, racial experiment that forever changed the demographics of the region.

Mrs. Anna Donner sharing her memories of her life in Vanport and Guild's Lake at Vanport Mosaic oral history screening at PCC on 12/5/2015. (Photo by Intisar Abioto)

Mrs. Bea Gilmore at the Vanport Mosaic oral history screening at PCC on 12/5/2015. We shared her memories of life in Vanport and the day of the flood with an audience of 200 people. (Photo by Intisar Abioto)

Mr. Drayden is a veteran and he shared his fond memories of attending Vanport College (now PSU) at Vanport Mosaic oral history screening at PCC on 12/5/2015. (Photo by Intisar Abioto)

Mr. Ob Hill, Vanport survivor and community historian, at the Vanport Mosaic multimedia oral histories at PCC Cascade on 12/5/2015. (Photo by Intisar Abioto)

Mr. Frank Leslie Blanchard, 96, worked as a manager at Little Chapel of The Chimes funeral home at the time of the flood. He shared his memories of that tragedy.

Our crowdfunding is another testimony of community support. Eighty-two people have contributed so far, and we are only $3700 away from reaching our full goal!  Your tax-deductible donation ( by December 17th!) will allow us to offer more free oral history/media production workshops, train more story-gatherers, and interview those who lived in Vanport, now in their 80s and 90s, before their historical memory is no longer available to us.

Please help Vanport Mosaic keep history alive:

www.oregonskitchentable.org/crowdfunding/vanport-mosaic

On the 74th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, we are reminded of one of the most flagrant violations of civic liberties in American history: the relocation of nearly 120.000 Japanese-Americans in internment camps, two months after the bombing.

Vanport Mosaic is honored to partner up with Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center to keep this history alive. Before the war, Portland was home to a thriving Japantown. In February 1942 President Roosevelt, reacting to wartime hysteria, issued Executive Order 9066 which led to the evacuation and internment of all Japanese Americans, including those born in the U.S..
They were given only days to prepare for the upheaval of their life.

We will produce multimedia pieces based on the oral histories of those who returned to Portland after the closing of the camps. Housing discrimination forced them in limited housing options. Many moved into Vanport to rebuild their lives, just to lose everything once again when the flood wiped out the city in 1948.

Courtesy of the Pacific Citizen - Densho Digital Repository

We need YOUR HELP!

• Please support our effort with a tax-deductible donation by 12/17/2015: https://www.oregonskitchentable.org/crowdfunding/vanport-mosaic

• Help us finding the missing voices. We are looking for Japanese Americans who lived in Vanport willing to share their memories with us, as well as photos and resources to produce their digital narratives. Contact us at vanportmosaic@gmail.com

We've raised enough to offer another FREE workshop! Thanks to the outpouring of donations to our on-going crowd fund, and thanks to our friends at the ReBuilding Center who offered to host us, we can start planning on the training of a new cohort of story-gatherers.

Sign up here to secure your spot and be notified with the dates and details. In our 2-weekend long session, you will learn how to interview former Vanport residents and produce a short multimedia oral history to add to the Vanport Mosaic growing database of personal narratives of life in Vanport.

As a city and as a State, we forgot about what once was Oregon's second-largest city and the largest public housing project in the U.S. that was wiped out by a flood in 1948 in less than a day. Now, as a community, we are committed to re-discover it and honor the experience of those who lived there, now in their 80s and 90s. 

Please continue to support our on-going effort by making a tax deductible donation here. With your help, we will be able to offer more workshops, keep interviewing the growing number of former Vanport residents who wish to record their memories, and share their stories at public screenings.

With gratitude and excitement,
Laura Lo Forti, story midwife, 
and the Vanport Mosaic team. 

Thanksgiving in Vanport circa 1944. From Portland Archives.

If you'd like to capture and preserve memories of a family member, our team will interview your loved one and produce a multimedia oral history for you!

Learn how!

Did you learn about Vanport in school? I grew up an hour and a half’s drive from where Vanport stood and I certainly never learned about it until well after I moved to Portland, and I’m far from the only one.

The story of Vanport is that of an instant and diverse community, one which came together because of World War II, and of the residents of this city that appeared almost overnight, who built the ships that played a pivotal role in winning the war in the pacific.

Even here in Portland where we are so close to the site of this historically significant place, people are surprised to learn that Vanport even existed. We hear from people of all generations at screenings of our short documentaries and in our workshops that they have not been taught about this chapter of history.

We all are left wondering why history books and curricula don’t even mention what once was Oregon’s second-largest city, home to 40,000 people who, between 1942 and 1948, came from all over the country to build a new life.

If Oregonians have heard of Vanport, they usually only know that it was destroyed in a flood; the many visitors to Delta Park, the Portland International Raceway, and the Heron Lakes Golf Course have little reminder of the city that once stood on the land they walk on.

“People in Portland should be proud that our city did something in the war in the Pacific,” Professor James S. Harrison who teaches history at Portland Community College, told me recently.

“There is such a great void in leaving that [Vanport and Portland’s contribution to the war effort] out,” he says. He is committed to filling that emptiness and is writing a book about Vanport’s place in Portland’s history.

We are lucky enough to have several historians and educators like Professor Harrison as part of the Vanport Mosaic team, people who are determined to make this forgotten piece of history available to teachers and students. These members include Tatum Clinton-Selin who, after learning about Vanport and attending one of our free workshops, was so inspired that she decided to devote her Master’s thesis to creating a Vanport curriculum for high school students as a resource for the growing number of teachers who want to share this history with their students.

You can download it here:

While writing her curriculum, Tatum thought about how much she would have enjoyed learning about Vanport when she was in high school. With her younger self in mind, she has created a beautiful and approachable way to learn about Vanport that offers students and teachers primary and secondary source texts, including excerpts from one of our stories, as well as projects, essays and presentations; there’s even an option for students to get involved in our on-going oral history project. 

Great endeavors are always the fruit of strong collaborations, and our Mosaic needs all the pieces that make up our beautiful community. So, a heartfelt thank you to Tatum for creating this curriculum and making it available here; to Concordia University Professor of Education Shawn Daley, and Amy Platt and Denise Brock  at the Oregon Historical Society, for their feedback; to Professor Harrison for his continued guidance; and finally, a note of gratitude to all of you who will share the history of Vanport with the young people in your life. Please drop us a line, here as a comment or at vanportmosaic@gmail.com, if you use Tatum’s curriculum, or if you created your own and would like to offer it to the community.

Meredith Lawrence

Meredith is a journalist and multimedia producer with a background in narrative storytelling and education reporting. She's been part of the Vanport Mosaic since its inception, teaching multimedia production skills in our workshops, and producing several short documentaries based on oral histories interviews to Vanport former residents. Learn more about her here: www.meredithalawrence.com

The first time I met Lily Raxter, I had no idea what she would mean to me. I went to interview her about her life in Vanport, and I passed a lovely afternoon with her, listening to her story and capturing her life. When I left her home that day, I never really expected to see her again, as is most often the case when I interview someone.

But when I started editing my footage to produce her story, the more I wanted to do justice to her experience. As I went back to visit and interview her more, we began to form a relationship. Each time I saw her, she and her husband welcomed me into their home, and we talked long after I had finished shooting. She began to invite me to lunch and to events.

Lily and her husband Garland have a large and loving family and a huge network of friends, but she always seems to have time for one more. She asked me to photograph her 80th birthday party. There, surrounded by the hundreds of people she has collected and loved over the years, she did not hesitate to bring me into this beautiful extended family she has made for herself. That was the day she found out that I do not have any living grandparents anymore and upon hearing this, she responded simply, “well, now you have one.”

Lily and her family lost everything in the Vanport flood and now, as she says in her video below, she holds onto people more than things, and I feel so lucky to be one of the many she has drawn into her arms.

This is her story: 

Please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign and help us continue bringing these stories to the community:oregonskitchentable.org/crowdfunding/vanport-mosaic

Meredith Lawrence

Meredith is a journalist and multimedia producer with a background in narrative storytelling and education reporting. She's been part of the Vanport Mosaic since its inception, teaching multimedia production skills in our workshops, and producing several short documentaries based on oral histories interviews to Vanport former residents. Learn more about her here: www.meredithalawrence.com

 

In honor of Veterans Day 2015, we are compiling a list of photos, videos, stories and resources to explore the experience of "the ex G.I.s who has gone to war as boys and came home as men," and made Vanport their home.

Portland State University started as Vanport Extension Center in 1946. Check out the wonderful online exhibit : "In 1946, the Oregon State System of Higher Education launched an extension program in Vanport.  It was intended to run for a limited time, primarily to serve returning WWII veterans and their families.  Its operations were cut short by flooding in 1948, but the Vanport Extension Center, immediately known as Vanport College to its faculty and students, later relocated to downtown Portland and grew into Portland State, now Oregon's largest university." 

In a letter to the Oregonian in 2013, Joan Eyer remembers her father, John H. Eyer, former army engineer staff sergeant, attending Vanport Center College by day and working a graveyard shift by night. The Eyer family was featured in the June 27, 1946 Oregonian.

 

A veteran and his wife look at plans and dream about their future together in their new home financed by a GI Bill loan. (Oregon State Archive image, Folder 14, Box 37, Defense Council Records)

This 1947 promotional video for  the Vanport Extension Center talks about the "ex G.I.s who has gone to war as boys and came home as men." Many returning veterans married after the war and started families. Recognizing the special needs of the targeted student body, the availability of family unit housing as well as other family-related resources were a strong focus on Vanport's outreach.

In this great article from 2006 in occasion of Portland State University 60th anniversary, Lisa Loving interviewed, among others, Capt. John Hakanson. He attended Vanport College thanks to the G.I. Bill, after serving in New Guinea, the Philippine Islands, and Japan.

Vanport children gathered around maypole playground structure for photo publicizing efforts of Vanport citizens to raise funds for a summer recreation.

Names of children, from left to right : Nathaniel Hooper, Elgina Wholford, Ailene Akiyama, Robert Weitzel, Roger Dunn, MacAruthur School PTA youth organization and recreation committee chairman Mrs Edward Walters and Roosevelt School PTA president Mrs Marionne Hecker

A2001-025.723

In the past month we had the fortune to partner up with the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. For the second year, assistant professor Wes Pope devoted his Oral History and Media Production workshop to Vanport, and his students, together with our volunteers, are producing five new beautiful stories. I can’t wait to share them with you all!

As I was sitting in the lab yesterday, listening to each team discussing their interview and struggling in making decisions on what to keep and what to let go, I was reminded of the story behind the story: telling someone else’s life is a messy affair.

Please remember that when you sit in the audience on December 5th and immerse yourself in the experience of Vanport former residents we interviewed in past 6 months. Each of these story starts with a phone call or an email from someone who attended a screening in the past, or heard about our project. A simple “I was there too” starts a wave of excitement. Another voice to capture, another piece to add to the mosaic. The first important decision needs to be made: who is going to conduct the interview? It is a delicate balance between the comfort of the narrators, in their 80s and 90s, and the personal curiosity of the assigned oral historian. If you get it right, the magic happens: memories flow and questions invite more; laughter are shared; tears are witnessed with respect; silence is a pause between emotions, and not an akward moment to nervously fill up with empty words.

When the interview is done right, a relationship is built. Seeing new, sometime improbable, friendships blossom is one of the many gifts of this project. Based on what the students told me yesterday, it happened again. They had that surprised and excited tone I have come to expect when they shared that Mrs. Shirley cooked them dinner, after they spent 5 hours with her and her family, capturing memories and looking at photo albums. I recognized my own gratitude for a new special bond with Mrs. Carolyn that will result in “just checking in how you are doing”-phone calls, and long chats over tea, meeting grandchildren and feeling welcomed as long-time friends.

Then, there is the editing. What it is often a 2-hour long interview, full of the unexpected twists and turns that life is, needs to be trimmed down to 5-7 minute cohesive story. I watched the producers struggling with those heavy decisions yesterday. Twenty pages of transcribed memories; five year of someone’s experience that include making Vanport their home and losing all in the flood… how to encapsulate it all in a short video that can honor the narrator and give justice to the complexity of the larger narrative of what once was the second-largest city of Oregon?

And then there is you. What part will you find interesting? What quote will make you think? What word will upset you? What conversation are we invited to have, through this story??

As I watched the teams struggling with all this, I wished that on Dec. 5th, together with the new beautiful digital narratives they are producing, you could watch a video about the story behind the story. In its whole messiness, it is one I love!

From the U.S. National Archives: African American Soldiers Filling Sandbags During the Vanport Flood, Columbia River, 6/3/1948, Near Portland, Oregon

From Eugene Register Guard Dec. 17 1942

Mrs. Paula Hartman passed away this past summer, on July 9, at age 88.

When you are involved in an oral history project that aims to capture and preserve personal memories from WWII, you expect to get sad news like this more and more frequently. But I find myself watching her video one more time, despite having seen it so many times I almost know it frame by frame. More than ever I wish to share it over and over, at public screenings as we’ve been doing for the past year, and now with you, online (with her family’s permission).

It is a good story. Watch it. It has a strong story arch, the simple and touching story of falling in love and starting a life during the war and in the face of a flood.

Paula Hartman, "The Newlywed" from Vanport Mosaic on Vimeo.

It has memorable quotes (“I was 19 one day and married the next” is a favorite at all screenings), a lovable character with a contagious laughter, and, through the poetic details of her wedding gown saved from the flood, it answers a question we can all relate to: what truly matters in life?

But what makes it a "Good" story, as opposed to simply a "good" one, is more than the fact that it follows the basic rules of storytelling.

To tell a Good story it matters who ask the questions. Mrs. Hartman was interviewed by her grandson Christopher and her daughter-in-law Nancy, with the support of oral historian Lena Rebecca Richardson. They participated in one of the free workshops I lead last year for the NPMTC/Vanport Multimedia Project. As a team of historians, artists, media makers, educators, and facilitators, we explored why telling the Vanport story matters today, after almost 70 years. We asked each other honest questions about Portland’s racial history and its current legacy. We supported each other in the tortuous journey towards authentic understanding across differences. We accepted the risk of making mistakes, and embraced our responsibility to honor each narrator's experience by listening with an open heart, recognizing that different perspectives can co-exist, and that our goal was NOT to establish the truth, but rather to preserve and honor memories. We embarked on a mission to unearth forgotten memories and to honor them for what they are: individual narratives, all true, all valid, and all precious.

Christopher and Nancy overcame their initial worries of telling the Vanport story from a white perspective, and how it would be received. As much as it matters who asks the questions, for a Good story to remain such, it also matters who receives it. Our invitation is very intentional: come to explore a forgotten chapter of history, to celebrate the experience of those who witnessed it, and to honor community resilience. Nancy told me her mother-in-law felt very special to be included, and to have so many people come up to her after the screening to talk about her story.

As I watch again Mrs. Hartman’s video, I find myself once again smiling and moved to tears by this story and I am filled with gratitude to her, to Nancy and to Christopher for sharing this gift with us, and to all of you now who can cherish this Good story and keep it alive.

---

Update: Nancy Hartman kindly shared her experience in interviewing her mother-in-law as part of our participatory oral history program, and what it mean for Mrs. Paula to attend the screening and feeling honored and celebrated:

When we started looking for former Vanport residents willing to be interviewed as part of our community-based oral history project, we struggled to find them. Of the few contacts we made, only a handful were interested in participating. Others were struggling with their health, and some simply declined, sounding wary and distrustful.

A year later, we have a growing list of people wishing to share their memories. What changed?

Those of you who have been part of our free storytelling and media-production workshops, or attended one of our screenings, heard me talk about “the gift of a story.” As someone who abandoned the journalistic approach of “getting the story” to embrace the role of a “story midwife,” someone who invites and nurtures personal narratives, this is the language that reflects my beliefs, and those who end up working with me. We see the personal stories as an antidote to the historical amnesia surrounding Vanport, and the unwillingness to recognize its legacy.

Our gratitude to those who share their memories is sincere. It is reflected in the care that dozens of volunteers have been putting into translating the hour-long interviews in powerful short multimedia pieces. This project is a collective effort to honor the voice of each narrator and contribute to a mosaic that is forming a fascinating, multi-layered, and complicated larger narrative.

At the public screenings of the stories, hundreds of people gather to celebrate the survivors and their memories. Tears are shed, laughter is heard, and smiles are shared. It’s called empathy. And so, event after event, more Vanport survivors attend to remember together and to share the gift of those memories with us. Vanport has been forgotten by us, not by them. 

“A story being told to you and a story being lived is two different stories," Mr. Wallace Sanders said in his interview. Thanks to Mr. Sanders and other survivors, we are slowly starting to learn about the community, the relationships, and the events that so much shaped Portland and Oregon. The good and the bad. A story told as a gift, and received as such, is a story that will be remembered.

 - Laura Lo Forti, Story Midwife

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Photos By Kate Szorm

We are thrilled and honored to collaborate with Shalanda Sims, writer and director of Vanport, The Musical, in capturing more stories. She and her cast will participate to our first Story Harvest, interviewing survivors at Jefferson High School, in preparation of their performance (July30-August 1st). You do not want to miss Vanport, the Musical! The first date is already sold out, so hurry up and get your tickets here. 

Through Shalanda's own words: 

"When I started this Vanport journey over seven years ago it was simply to learn my family history but the story of this city I'd never heard of before captivated me.  I became obsessed with wanting more information. However, the only written information I found was extremely political, data heavy and documentary.  

My great-grandmother came to Oregon during WWII to work in the shipyards...my family has been here ever since.  I wanted to know what it was like to live in Vanport, what it smelled like, how people felt down in their innermost being. Why did my great-grandmother choose to stay? The answers came from my mother, grandmother and other natives like Mrs. Regina Flowers who grew up in Vanport and Ms. Stell who was one of the first women workers there. The more they shared, the more Vanport extended beyond my family tree. I knew this was a story I had to tell in the best way I know how...on the stage.

After the script was finished and the play premiered other survivors shared their stories with me.  But, there was no way I could incorporate everyone's personal story in my script. It is a  privilege to work with Laura Lo Forti of the Vanport Media Project in preserving these stories of elders who contributed to this country in an extraordinary and noteworthy way. 

I hope you will attend this three day event as well as help me spread the word so as many people as possible can see this play."