SATO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. The board of the Beaverton School District has named the 34th elementary school in the district the Sato Elementary School. The school was named in honor of the Sato family. Yoshinosuke and Asano Sato moved to the Bethany area from Washington state in 1926. The new school is scheduled to open in the north Bethany area in September. (Renderings courtesy of the Beaverton School District)

From The Asian Reporter, V27, #6 (March 20, 2017), page 11.

Beaverton School Board honors Sato family with new elementary school name

The board of the Beaverton School District has named the 34th elementary school in the district the Sato Elementary School. Built for children in kindergarten through fifth grade, the new school is scheduled to open in the north Bethany area in September.

The school was named in honor of the Sato family. Yoshinosuke and Asano Sato moved to the Bethany area from Washington state in 1926. They were Japanese Americans who lived and successfully farmed on Brugger Road, growing strawberries, blackberries, youngberries, and vegetables on their property. The couple’s four children — Lois, Marie, Shin, and Roy — attended Bethany School and Beaverton High School.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Sato family was sent to the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho from May 1942 through August 1945. The two sons, Shin and Roy, enlisted in the U.S. Army with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team of American-born Japanese. The 442nd suffered tremendous casualties, with 28 percent of the soldiers killed or wounded. Shin died in combat in 1944. Roy was wounded twice and received the Purple Heart.

After Roy was discharged from the army in 1945, he returned to his parent’s farm with his wife. However, the farm was never the same because it had not been maintained properly in their absence. The Sato family is buried in nearby Bethany Presbyterian Cemetery.

The new school is located on former farmland and will provide enrollment relief to nearby Springville K-8, which is experiencing overcrowding due to record growth in the area.

The construction of Sato Elementary School is funded by a $680-million bond measure passed in May 2014 to relieve district-wide overcrowding.

The Beaverton community passed the bond to build three new schools — a high school, a middle school, and an elementary school — as well as demolish and rebuild four existing schools — Vose, Hazeldale, and William Walker elementary schools in addition to the Arts & Communication Magnet Academy. Also included in the bond are repairs and improvements to current school facilities as well as investing in technology infrastructure and learning tools over an eight-year period.

The district acquired 10 acres of land for Sato Elementary School in March 2006 from Sharon and Bruce Hosford for a purchase price of $4,000,000.

To learn more, call (503) 356-4360 or visit <www.beaverton.k12.or.us>.