Talk:Rose City Cemetery

Japanese cemetery isn't "large".
The Rose City Cemetery is approximately 70 acres; the first "white" interment was 1906. The Japanese Cemetery preceded it by more than a decade, but that is only about 0.1 acres, mostly small monuments containing urns of "cremains". This is "original research" and doesn't belong in the main page, but neither does the adjective "large" in front of "portion", which is not in the original Japanese Ancestral Society text.

Again not academically sourced, but according to a retired groundskeeper ... in the late 1800s, the city of Portland did not allow Japanese-Americans to be buried within the city limits. So the Japanese cemetery was built in unincorporated Multnomah County on a corner of a Japanese-American farmer's field. Presumably most of the original farm field (fronting Fremont Street, then a rural farm road) was incorporated in the (much larger) 70 acre cemetery. Many of the stone monuments are damaged; I wonder if that was intentional, perhaps after Pearl Harbor?

That may be documented in a cite-able source somewhere. It would make the article more interesting, and shed some light on Portland's racist past. I hope this will inspire someone to find verifiable primary sources, and that nobody will consider what I just wrote a primary source.

KeithLofstrom (talk) 10:12, 12 January 2020 (UTC)