Seattle and Tacoma are the first and third largest cities in Washington State, located in the northwestern part of the United States (the state capital is Olympia). Seattle is well known in Japan for Ichiro, Microsoft, and Starbucks, and attracts many tourists. Along with Tacoma, which has one of the best ports in the United States, it was also an area where many early Japanese immigrants moved. Both cities are blessed with natural resources, and sawmills were established in the mid-19th century. The population rapidly increased during the Klondike Gold Rush in Alaska in 1887, and they prospered through rail transport and Oriental trade. After that, they grew into the largest economic zone in the northwestern part of the United States, with the shipbuilding industry at its peak during World War I and the aircraft industry led by Seattle's Boeing Company, and today they are home to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, AT&T, and others. As of 2000, the populations of Seattle and Tacoma were approximately 600,000 and 200,000, respectively.

Nishii Kyuhachi (from Ehime Prefecture), one of the pioneers of Japanese immigration to Seattle, arrived in the area in 1883 (Meiji 16). When he got a job at the Port Blakely Lumber Mill, the largest in the world at the time on Bainbridge Island across from Seattle, there were already about 20 Japanese "former sailors" working there. He moved to Seattle in 1887 and opened the Star Western Restaurant. According to "History of Japanese Immigrants to the Northwestern United States," Seattle at that time was "an extremely small city with only a few four- or five-story buildings and the rest being single-story wooden buildings," and "the commercial district had only just been divided into First and Second Streets, and there were culverts and trees along the streets, making for an extremely desolate scene" (Takeuchi 1929).

Japantown appeared in Seattle during the reconstruction period after the Great Fire of 1889. Kafu Nagai, who visited Japantown in 1905 (Meiji 38), wrote, "Just as I had heard on the ship, there were tofu shops, sweet bean soup shops, sushi shops, soba shops, everything. When I saw the Japanese town, it looked exactly the same as it had been in the past. I was astonished and looked around for a while." The social and economic foundations were built around the main streets between 4th and 7th Avenues, but the residential area spread out further, and a community was formed with a mix of churches, grocery stores, theaters, Japanese language schools, hotels, restaurants, and public baths.

One of the reasons why so many Japanese immigrants landed in Seattle and Tacoma was the service to Tacoma and Seattle provided by Nippon Yusen, Osaka Shosen, and other companies engaged in Oriental trade. In 1896 (Meiji 29), Nippon Yusen opened a route to Seattle after being offered a partnership by the Great Northern Railroad Company. In 1909 (Meiji 42), Osaka Shosen opened its Puset Sound Line in Tacoma, which lost out in the bidding to attract Nippon Yusen. It was once said that Seattle developed with the Great Northern Railroad as its father and Nippon Yusen as its mother. The number of Japanese people increased rapidly, with immigrants who came directly from Japan and those who transferred from Hawaii added to the mix.

The forced eviction of 1942 destroyed the Japantown, which had been a source of spiritual support for Japanese immigrants before the war. After the war, people who returned to the area were solely focused on assimilating into American society, and the Japantowns of Seattle and Tacoma never regained their former appearance. Everything that reminded them of "Japan" was shunned. Unlike the revival of the "Japantowns" in San Francisco and Los Angeles, only a few buildings remain in Seattle, reminding us of the past of the Japantown, although they are not comparable to the prewar ones. The Japan Pavilion, built in 1909 and used as a theater before World War II, was designated a national historic landmark in 1980. The Panama Hotel, which faces Main Street, was also designated a historic landmark in 2006. It was built in 1910 as a lodging facility for Japanese workers, and continues to operate as a hotel today, retaining vestiges of its past. The former public bath remains in the basement, and part of the floor of the adjacent cafe is now made of glass, allowing visitors to see the luggage left behind during the forced eviction.

In recent years, the Japanese towns of Seattle and Tacoma, which had retained only a small vestige of their former appearance, are undergoing rapid transformation. I hear that the Japanese Pavilion in Seattle has been put up for sale since the death of its owner. The Japanese language school building that remained in Tacoma was also demolished to make way for the development of the University of Washington campus. Fife, close to Tacoma and where many Japanese once worked as farmers (many of them were from Ehime Prefecture and it was called "Ehime Village"), was also sold off after Nippon Yusen Kaisha signed a 25-year lease with the Port of Tacoma for a container terminal (scheduled to open in 2012), and the area is now being transformed into a street and warehouse district.

With many first and second generation immigrants now gone, and interracial and interethnic marriages among the fourth and fifth generation immigrants increasing, it is said that the number of people with a "Japanese" identity will continue to decrease. UWAJIMAYA, the largest grocery store for Japanese people in the Northwestern United States, which is known to everyone in Seattle (its founder was from Yawatahama, Ehime Prefecture), continues to grow and the success of Japanese people in various fields is being reported. On the other hand, old Japantowns are disappearing. While I think that we should avoid talking about the history of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans from a Japanese perspective, I have mixed feelings these days when I hear the words of a second generation immigrant who smiles sadly and says, "I don't know."

*This article is a reprint of the special exhibition "Japanese Immigrants in the United States and the War Era" (2010), edited and published by the National Museum of Japanese History. This exhibition will be held until Sunday, April 3, 2011.

© 2010 National Museum of Japanese History