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Back This Time Will Be Different Save as PDF
Chapters (77)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. 1
  4. 2
  5. A Series of Screw-ups: The Chisaki Joan Katsuyama Story, Part I
  6. 3
  7. The History of My Beef with Brynn Foer-Preston
  8. 4
  9. 5
  10. 6
  11. 7
  12. The History of the Katsuyama Family, Part I
  13. 8
  14. 9
  15. A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part I
  16. 10
  17. 11
  18. 12
  19. A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part II
  20. 13
  21. The History of the Katsuyama Family, Part II
  22. 14
  23. 15
  24. 16
  25. 17
  26. 18
  27. 19
  28. The Complicated History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Imaginary Relationship with Her Nonexistent Dad
  29. 20
  30. 21
  31. 22
  32. A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part III
  33. 23
  34. 24
  35. 25
  36. A Brief, Backward History of the McAllister Family, as Paraphrased from the San Jose Mercury News
  37. 26
  38. 27
  39. 28
  40. A Quick and Eerily Relevant History of Asians in America
  41. 29
  42. 30
  43. 31
  44. 32
  45. 33
  46. 34
  47. 35
  48. 36
  49. A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part IV
  50. 37
  51. 38
  52. 39
  53. 40
  54. 41
  55. 42
  56. 43
  57. 44
  58. A Series of Screw-ups: The Chisaki Joan Katsuyama Story, Part II (Or Maybe It’s a Prequel)
  59. 45
  60. 46
  61. 47
  62. 48
  63. 49
  64. 50
  65. 51
  66. 52
  67. 53
  68. The History of the Katsuyama Family, Part III
  69. 54
  70. A Note from the Author
  71. Index of Flowers and their Meanings
  72. Acknowledgments
  73. About the Author
  74. Praise for This Time Will Be Different
  75. Books by Misa Sugiura
  76. Back Ad
  77. About the Publisher

According to the Merc article, the McAllisters—founders and benefactors of institutions like the McAllister Cancer Research Center, the McAllister Educational Foundation, and Eliza McAllister Memorial Hospital—started off as farmers, way back in the early 1900s, before computers were even invented, when the valley was carpeted with orchards and farms instead of strip malls and tech company parking lots. Back in simpler times, when Lennie and George worked the fields in Of Mice and Men, and Asians were forbidden by law to enter the country or become naturalized citizens.

By the 1950s, the McAllisters had become one of the largest landowners in the valley, and they went around donating land and money, sitting on city councils, and generally making a name for themselves as the generous, civic-minded pillars of the community that we know today.

Rewind to 1942

Funny thing, though. They came by a lot of that land and money in a not-so-civic-minded way. When Japanese American farmers and business owners were (unconstitutionally) rounded up and shipped off to internment camps during World War II, people like the McAllisters (cue ironic trumpet flourish: dunt-da-da-daa!) swooped in and offered to buy their properties for pennies on the dollar. Which I already knew.

What I didn’t know was that the McAllisters scooped up way more than Heart’s Desire. They bought hundreds of acres of land from displaced Japanese American farmers, in addition to homes and small businesses like my family’s. They developed them, sold them, and bought more land, which was developed and sold, and so on, and so on, making the McAllisters richer and richer. And then, finally, they started donating it.

According to Wikipedia, McAllister High School used to be an apricot orchard owned by the McAllister family. At the beginning of the fifties, they donated the land to the city to build a high school on. But, the Mercury News article read, that orchard originally belonged to an apricot farmer named Ryōhei Motohara. Robert McAllister Sr. bought it from Motohara in 1942 for 10 percent of its real value, just like he did with my great-grandfather.

Rewind to 1938

That’s not even all. Not only did the McAllisters acquire a fortune’s worth of real estate in the valley, but it turns out that Robert McAllister Sr., a true class act, had been pushing to get rid of the Japanese American community for years. He was a board member of the Native Sons of the Golden West, which lobbied Congress to ban Japanese immigration and even to deport everyone of Japanese descent. In one of the many letters he sent to state and national authorities, he actually wrote, “We must rid our communities of the insidious Yellow Peril that looms over honest white farmers and threatens our women and children. If we do not, the white man will certainly lose everything to the brown man.” Ooh, those scary Japanese people.