There’s an unloved plot of upturned gravel and dirt and pulverized concrete alongside S.E. Morrison Street. Bikes, busses, and downtown-bound cars hurry past early weekday mornings.

There are whispering maple and fragrant spruce; there’s a lot of dignified Douglas fir, all of them graciously overlapping one another immediately ahead and just beyond this neglected place. A place called Block 14.

It’s been Block 14 for a bit over 60 years. But it had another name, at another time in moody River City history. An awful history not all modern Portlanders had a hand in making, but a shared narrative we all now live inside. It was once called the Chinese Graveyard. And it had another life, this barren block did, a time when it was tenderly cared for by those who placed their loved ones here.

Today, 150 years into Chinese Portland history, a best guess is 1,300 to 1,500 grandpas and aunties, mothers and kids were laid to rest in the segregated southwest corner of Lone Fir Cemetery.

Why we don’t have good knowledge of the numbers; how we got from more than a thousand deceased Portlanders to not knowing who actually now lies in Block 14; where those buried Chinese relatives went after mass exhumations in 1928 then again in 1949; whether they wait forgotten in dank Hong Kong wharf warehouses or whether they’re at peace in ancestral soil — these are the questions at the heart of Block 14, Lone Fir Cemetery.

Some bad history

"Henry Valentine Low 1825 to 1888" reads a small white marble headstone, reverently unearthed and cleaned by Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery volunteers. Evidently, Mr. Low lived here and was loved here, long before most present day Portlanders unpacked our U-Hauls, curbside.

A hundred and fifty years ago, our Pacific Northwest’s uncut forests and unharvested crops; our unbuilt cities and the railroads, highways and tunnels planned to connect them — needed Mother China’s ambitious boys and men. The homeland was in economic despair, the faraway land had lots of good work, so she packed them into determined eastbound Hong Kong steamers.

The same push and pull explains Hawaiian then Punjabi then Mexican then Filipino then Mexican (again) working- men’s historic presence at the margins of our west coast’s white mainstream. It was the same uneasy mix of economic necessity and social loathing that prevented the natural integration of each successive migrant "bachelor society" from moving into settled society.

When enough white labor eventually arrived, immigrant workers were expelled. Likewise, when shrill leaders fanned local anxieties over foreigners among us, Oregon’s outsider communities suffered our excesses. In the hysteria following Imperial Japan’s 1941 bombing of the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Oregon families of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes, from their businesses and farms. Portlanders erased Japantown in two months.

Social segregation and communal expulsion has been a Portland habit since our city’s beginning. Asian neighbors, like African-American and Native-American families, like U.S.-born and foreign-born Latinos, have yet to settle into solid social legitimacy. For Portland’s Chinese grand elders, this illegitimacy dogged them even after their deaths. Block 14.

Beyond good accounting

A decade of forgetfulness followed the 1928 and 1949 mass exhumations and post-mortem repatriations of Chinese Portlanders. In 1958, county government built an office on this segregated southwest corner of Lone Fir Cemetery. On top of holy ground.

It took almost 50 years for our memories to be revived and Portlanders’ compassion to return. But it did all come home. In 2004, Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery president Christina Walsh discovered Oregon Historical Society documents referencing Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) records of buried sojourners. She called Benevolent Association teacher Rebecca Liu. Mdme. Liu dug deep into Chinatown’s Great Meeting Hall’s basement’s boxes until she found and dusted off an old ledger confirming that men, women, and their children were indeed laid to rest in last century’s Chinese Graveyard.

In 2004 also, county government demolished their office building and began proceedings before Metro Council to sell Block 14 for a high-rise residential development. Two women’s organizations protested the injustice of that proposed sale, shoulder to shoulder with former Oregon governor, internationalist, and Syrian immigrants’ son, the honorable Victor Atiyeh. They proposed a heritage garden memorial, instead.

Eight years of patient and persistent work between southeast Portland’s Friends of Lone Fir and Chinatown’s CCBA concluded in the October 17, 2012 celebratory gathering of friends and families at the northern edge of Block 14. No longer forgotten. No longer unloved.

"Now you know how Lone Fir Cemetery has captured my heart," concluded former governor Barbara Roberts, today a Metro councillor, always an Oregon stateswoman. "Just as, I’m sure, this hallowed ground has captured yours. So please join us on this journey as we transform this gravel lot into a welcoming entrance and memorial — the Cultural Heritage Garden at Lone Fir Cemetery."

Writing our future

The losses are inestimable — President Stephen Ying and Teacher Rebecca Liu of Portland’s Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association will tell you. The reasons are inexcusable, Christina Walsh and Frank Schaefer, past and current presidents of the Friends of Lone Fir will agree.

Indeed, those Portland neighbors and those Oregon leaders participating in a pathway to peace over the awful issues laid bare in the Chinese corner of Lone Fir Cemetery, have long conceded that the questions carved deep by our city’s racialized ruts cannot be answered. The past is irreparable.

Kinder city residents and more conscientious public leaders are asking if we can resolve these broken hearts and those lost relatives by raising awareness and raising funds for a gracious garden memorializing all those who rested here and those who still do. In our almost forgotten corner of Lone Fir Cemetery.

Our present, they propose, we can reconcile. Our future is ours to write.

* * *

Notas:

I have been brief, and this expression of gratitude is incomplete. Many-many more civic activists and local officials have committed enormous amounts of love, time, and money into building this reconciliation and this heritage garden than can be properly thanked inside an 900-word essay. Terima kasih banyak (I offer our love in gratitude).

To learn about Portland filmmaker Ivy Lin’s Portland-to-Hong-Kong-and-back documentary about Block 14, Come Together Home, please visit <www.ivylinfilm.com/cometogetherhome.html>.

For more information about the Lone Fir Cemetery Foundation, visit <www.lonefirblock14.org>. To make a donation, write to: The Lone Fir Cemetery Foundation, P.O. Box 12051, Portland, OR 97212. Please note "Block 14" in the memo line.