Does the name Barbara Yamada sound familiar? Barbara has been volunteering and donating to the Marriott Library for more than two decades. She has chaired the Ski Affair, the library’s annual benefit gala for the Ski and Snow Sports Archives, for over 20 years. She has also donated both photographs and papers documenting her work as a ski instructor at Park City West and Alta, her involvement with the United States Ski Association (USSA), and her work as the executive director of the Intermountain Division in 1973 and her volunteer work for various organizations dedicated to winter sports.

Description of the Kunio Yamada Collection

Isotaro and Misao Hashimoto Yamada were immigrants from Japan who settled in Idaho in the early twentieth century. Together, they had six children: Hidoshi “Mike” Yamada, Jiro Yamada, Miyo Yamada Fuji, Natsuyo Yamada “Natch” Tominaga, Toshiko Yamada “Toshi” Higashi, and Kunio Yamada. The Yamadas lived in what is now the Pocatello metropolitan area, first opening a restaurant in McCammon, Idaho, in the early 1920s. They later moved to Tyhee, where they had a farm where they grew cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and other produce. The family farm, T.M. Yamada, or T.M.Y. Vegetable Gardens, was located between Alameda and Pole Line Road, near what is now Cahoon Avenue, in Pocatello, Idaho. Courtesy of Archives West.

Barbara is now associated with another collection – the Kunio Yamada Collection of photographs, which are included in the Digital Library. The eight wonderful black and white images (1920– 1940) are traced to Barbara’s family farm, T.M.Y. Vegetable Gardens, which was located between Alameda and Pole Line Road, near what is now Cahoon Avenue, in Pocatello, Idaho. The farm was started by Barbara’s grandfather, Isotaro Yamada, and then passed on to his sons. Kunio Yamada, now 93, still resides in Pocotello.

“My sisters and brother were fortunate to grow up with a great family of aunts and uncles on the farm,” explains Barbara. “The extended family lived together on this farm for the first several years of my life. After we moved into town we went to the farm on the weekends to help with the harvesting of potatoes and sugar beets; and in the spring the cutting seed potatoes. Great memories of those days.”

The Yamada collection is part of the Mitsugi M. Kasai Memorial Japanese American Archive which includes oral histories, manuscripts, the Nippo Newspaper and countless photographs documenting the settlement of Japanese Americans in Utah and surrounding states.