By Ji Hyun Lim
After three years of campaigning, the Japanese American Citizen League officially announced that a mountain in the Pocatello Range in Southeastern Idaho would be changed from Chink’s Peak to Chinese Peak. The United States Board on Geographic Names’ (USBGN) seven voting members unanimously approved a petition to change the name of the 5,000 ft. mountain on Sept. 5.
Greg Anderson, mayor of Pocatello, Karen Yoshitomi, regional director of the Seattle branch of JACL and Micki Kawakami of the Pocatello-Blackfoot JACL chapter were among the 10 people invited by the USBGN to give support for the proposal to change the name.
Kawakami explained to the board: “In the face of the destruction of the WTC and the damage to the Pentagon, it may seem that an aesthetic condition like a name diminishes in importance. But the underlying theme is once again hate and violence dividing individuals, people and countries against one another. In a relatively small but important way, our work in changing an insensitive name can also discourage irrational hate and acceptance of racism and encourage tolerance and greater understanding of others.”
National Executive Director of JACL John Tateishi saw the name modification as a victory for APIAs, pointing out that any acceptance of such hate words dehumanizes ethnic groups.
However, Idaho Advisory Council member Jeff Ford had doubts and opposed the recommended change. He argued that changing the name would “sanitize history.” Furthermore, the assumption that the mountain was named after a Chinese miner was an urban legend, he said.
“The Union Pacific [railroad] never hired Chinese laborers in Southeastern Idaho,” Ford claimed. “They hired Irish workers. The Chinese were responsible for building the Central Pacific Railroad from Sacramento to the East, not the Union Pacific from Idaho to Oregon.”
He added, “When the name was applied to the site, ‘chinks’ was not necessarily a derogatory term. It just got that way. I want things to remain historically accurate.”
Kawakami found several historical resources — including a letter to an editor from Idaho State Journal in 1949 — that described a man named Ben Lyon, who claimed his father named the mountain. According to the archives, a Chinese laborer named Jimmy Murray, who worked on the mountain, discovered he had a terminal illness. He took four peaches, went to the peak to meditate and cleanse his soul and body, and died there. Since then, stories spread by word-of-mouth from three or four local historians, have been the basis of other references. In addition, Kawakami claimed that people who grew up in Pocatello can vouch for the story.
Ford said he is not convinced that actually happened, furthermore that Murray’s death was not honorable because committed suicide. According to Ford, the story goes that Murray was suffering from some malady and went up to the mountain to pray and fast, bringing four peaches to eat. Ford claimed Murray took poison to kill himself on the mountain.
Said Ford: “Take ‘Chinks Peak’ off the map or come up with something that’s going to be historically accurate like Four Peaches Mountain. [Chinese Peak] doesn’t mean a thing.”
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