Anyone living in the Treasure Valley for more than a few days knows that Chinden Boulevard is named after the Chinese vegetable gardens that fed the local residents for many years.

Less well known are the agricultural operations at the Minidoka relocation camp (actually located near Hunt, Idaho, about 50 miles west of the town of Minidoka) during World War II.

The relocation camp was in an area that was managed by the Bureau of Reclamation and was deemed to be good future farmland. The Milner-Gooding Canal had been built in 1932 and serviced farms near Twin Falls, Shoshone and Jerome. The camp was on the north bank of the main line of the canal and six and a half miles west of the Milner-Gooding Canal.

The first Japanese-American residents arrived on Aug. 10, 1942. Most were from the Seattle and Portland areas and others were from Alaska. Arriving at the not-yet-finished camp was a complete shock to their collective and individual systems. There was not a tree in sight and the hot, dry, dusty air caused health problems for many.

The goal of the Bureau of Reclamation was to use the Japanese-American “evacuees” as free labor to clear the land, build lateral canal ditches and generally prepare the land for farming after the war was over and the camp disbanded and closed.

This fact was not lost on the residents. Within a couple of weeks of arriving at the camp, they started a newspaper and named it The Minidoka Irrigator. Several issues can be found on various web sites.

Most of the people relocated to the Minidoka camp had never farmed before. In spite of that, they cleared and leveled 1,166 acres of sagebrush and other native plants in the first two years. However only 226 acres were farmed in the summer of 1943 and 308 acres in 1944.

Because of the lay of the land, water from the main line of the canal couldn’t be accessed without an expensive pumping system. Therefore, the residents had to dig many miles of ditches and laterals from the Milner-Gooding Canal over 6 miles away.

Over 30 types of vegetables were grown in the newly plowed soil. Two-million pounds of produce were harvested in 1943 and three-million pounds were harvested in 1944. A root cellar was dug to store potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbage and squashes. Tomato canning was attempted but didn’t work out. A pickling plant and tofu production had better results. Even a surreptitious sake operation ran until it was discovered by officials and closed down.

Some of the residents worked and even lived at farms outside the compound. Some were treated and paid decently, others were not.

Agricultural work at the center was a pretty primitive affair. Since most of the residents had never farmed before and the terrain was completely foreign to them, they didn’t know what to expect. They were required to work long hours in the hot sun and were not provided meals, sanitation facilities or even drinking water. There was a lot of grumbling which turned into protests.

In addition to the crop production areas, residents were encouraged to grow victory gardens of their own outside their barracks. There were also two areas on the compound set aside for flower gardens and local nurseries and garden clubs donated plants. Grass was planted in the areas around the barracks to help hold the dust down. The residents designed and installed a large Japanese style garden at the entrance to the compound.

The camp was officially closed on Oct. 23, 1945. Yasusuke Kogita, said to have the most spectacular garden in the compound, dug up all the plants and rocks in his garden and hired a trucking company to haul the whole garden back to Seattle where it was recreated in front of his home.

A few months after closing, some of the lands were returned to the Bureau of Reclamation and the irrigated lands were distributed to returning veterans by lottery drawing. Veterans of Japanese descent (some who had been incarcerated at Minidoka) were not eligible for the auction.

Today, an aerial view of the area shows that most of the farming is done on the south side of the canals due to the slope of the land. Only the area that was once the relocation camp has farming operations on the north side of the main line canal.

Richard Yokoyama, the manager of the Pike Place Market in Seattle, was born at the camp in 1944.

Central Washington University has an excellent history of the Minidoka Relocation Camp on their web site.

If you have particular questions about gardening you’d like to see addressed in this column, send them to highprairielandscapedesign@yahoo.com.