Large scale immigration began in the 1890s with the growth of the logging and railroad industries in the Pacific Northwest, after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 limited migration of new cheap labor from China and those other areas controlled by the Qing dynasty.

The first historical record of Japanese in the Portland area is that of the three castaways Iwakichi, Kyukichi, and Otokichi, who lived for several months at Fort Vancouver in 1834.

After more than a year at sea, their rudderless ship finally beached on the northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula, where they were briefly enslaved by the indigenous Makah people.

Upon hearing of the three Asian captives, John McLoughlin, the Chief Factor (agent) for the Columbia District at the Hudson's Bay Company, secured their release and had them delivered to Fort Vancouver.

Miyo Iwakoshi died in 1931 and was buried in Gresham Pioneer Cemetery, Lot 85, Grave 3E, upon which a cedar tree was planted as a memorial.

During this time, mainstream racist and anti-immigrant attitudes were represented by the Ku Klux Klan and other organizations such as Asiatic Exclusion League that exerted influences on all levels of Oregon's political and public life.

Walter M. Pierce, a racist and a eugenics supporter, was the Democratic candidate in the 1922 gubernatorial election, publicly endorsed by the Klan against Republican incumbent Ben W. Olcott.

Pierce subsequently went on to win the election and began to enact a series of anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic laws including the Oregon Compulsory Education Act.

[9] To get around this many Issei parents would put their land ownership documents in the names of their Nisei children, who were American citizens by birth.

In 1925, a predominantly white mob of fifty men forced a group of Japanese saw mill workers out of their homes and jobs in nearby Toledo, Oregon due to growing anti-Japanese sentiment.

[11] When spring arrived there was found to be a shortage of farm laborers in Malheur County, Oregon to cultivate the nearly 12,000 acres of recently planted sugar beet.

Local officials appealed to the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to provide some of the recently incarcerated Japanese Americans as farm laborers from the Assembly Center.

However, on May 20, 1942, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt issued Civilian Restrictive Order Number 2, allowing for 400 Japanese Americans from the Portland Assembly Center to move to Malheur County to work as agricultural laborers.

[12] Most of the rest of the Japanese Americans in Portland were sent in groups by rail to the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho, following the completion of that camp's construction.

"[14] The Oregon Legislature passed an amended, more restrictive Alien Land Law in 1945, prohibiting Issei from living or working on farmland.

The Government of Japan has an official Consular office in downtown Portland at the Wells Fargo Center near Terry Schrunk Plaza.

Situated on the north end of Tom McCall Waterfront Park, the Plaza was designed by landscape architect Robert Murase and covers of 100 years of Japanese American history in Oregon.

The temple identifies itself as part of the Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha sect of the Jōdo Shinshū or Shin school of Pure Land Buddhism.

As a result, the congregation moved to 2025 SE Yamhill Street where the ground breaking for the current day Nichiren Buddhist Temple was held on March 22, 1959, with the building being complete later that same year in October.