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Part 1: Prologue: The history of Japanese immigrants in Washington State

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Ties with Japan that began before the country opened up

179 years ago, in the late Edo period, three fishermen from Owari (now Aichi Prefecture) were washed ashore on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. About 40 years later, the era changed to Meiji, and in 1869, samurai from the former Aizu Domain traveled to San Francisco, marking the beginning of the migration of Japanese people to the mainland United States.

The 1880 U.S. census recorded one Japanese person in Washington state, but immigration to Seattle and Tacoma continued to increase from the 1890s, and the Tacoma Consulate was established in 1995. Immigrants who crossed the sea from prefectures such as Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Kumamoto, and Kagoshima worked hard at hard labor at sawmills, railroads, and farms. Eventually, religious facilities and Japanese language schools were built, and a Japantown was formed with hotels, restaurants, shops, dry cleaners, and other Japanese-run businesses lined up. Some of them became successful businessmen, and a number of "Japanese cultures" that continue to this day flourished, including the publication of Japanese-language newspapers, literature, art, and martial arts.

Seattle Dojo, 1928. (Photo: Gift of Keigi Horiuchi, Japanese American National Museum [99.341.6])

However, a culture of discrimination against Japanese immigrants existed from the beginning. In 1907, a movement to evict Japanese residents broke out in Wapato, in the central-southern part of the state. During World War I, there was a labor shortage, so Japanese workers were highly valued and Japantown thrived, but when the economy stagnated after the war, anti-Japanese sentiment grew again. In 1921, the Washington State Alien Land Law was enacted, prohibiting Japanese people from owning land and placing restrictions on leasing, and three years later the Japanese Exclusion Act was passed, banning the entry of foreigners who could not naturalize.

Responding to this movement were second-generation immigrants who were born as American citizens. Seattle-born Sakamoto James Yoshinori developed the Seattle Progressive Civic League (launched in 1921), which was organized to assert legitimate rights against the enactment of anti-Japanese land laws, and founded the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) in 1930. Attendees from the first meeting came from west coast states such as Washington, Oregon, and California, as well as Hawaii and New York, and called for Americanism (becoming American).

Prewar Seattle community (Photo: Gift of Eiko Sakuda, Japanese American National Museum [95.268.148A])

The outbreak of war and eviction, the suffering of each

But times were changing. Japan gradually became isolated in international relations, and the Manchurian Incident broke out in 1931, the year after JACL was founded, and Japan entered the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Relations between Japan and the United States also continued to deteriorate, and finally the Pacific War began on December 8, 1941 (December 7, Hawaii time) with the Japanese Navy's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The outbreak of war between Japan and the United States marked the beginning of a long period of suffering for Japanese Americans, and on the evening of the same day that news of the Pearl Harbor attack was announced, representatives of the community, including the chairman of the Japanese Association, the principal of a Japanese language school, and the president of a newspaper company, were arrested one after another by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Meanwhile, although JACL issued a statement of loyalty to the United States, the government's response was ultimately harsh, even towards second-generation Japanese, who were American citizens.

Eviction order (Wikipedia.com)

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Special Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forcible eviction of residents from certain designated military districts. The military districts included the western half of the three states of Washington, Oregon, and California, as well as the southern part of Arizona. As a result of this order, it is said that approximately 120,000 people who were deemed "enemy aliens" were sent to internment camps set up across the United States, including Minedoka (Idaho), Tule Lake, Manzanar (California), and Heart Mountain (Wyoming). Approximately 7,000 people living around Seattle were interned in Minedoka, while Japanese-Americans from nearby Bellevue and Kent were moved to Tule Lake.

For the first generation and the second generation, who had been trying to settle in the land they had moved to, the forced removal was an absurdity. To make matters worse, they were asked to fill out a questionnaire, known as the "Loyalty Question," regardless of their nationality, age, or gender. 27 of the questions asked whether they would like to serve in the military, and 28 whether they were loyal to the United States. Those who answered "no" to all of them were called "No-No Boys" and were gathered at the Tule Lake Internment Camp. Meanwhile, the second generation who volunteered for military service were assigned to the 442nd Regiment, which was made up of Japanese soldiers, and the Army Intelligence Service (MIS). A total of about 14,000 soldiers fought in the 442nd Regiment, which went to the European front, and soldiers assigned to the MIS were involved in rear support such as interpreting and interrogating prisoners of war on the Pacific front. The brave achievements of these second-generation soldiers are still talked about to this day, and in November 2011, the U.S. Congress awarded them the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor of the U.S. military.

■ Restoration of rights and a new generation: Japanese people travelling overseas

As the war situation settled, the US government's attitude towards Japanese Americans also began to change. In December 1944, the Army announced a plan to lift the evacuation order on the west coast from January of the following year. All internment camps were closed at the end of 1945, and people began to return to the towns they were accustomed to. After the war, it is said that many of the Japanese Americans in Seattle returned home, but the area around present-day International District, where Japantown once stood, became home to Chinese and other people. However, newspapers, hotels, and prefectural associations were reopened one after another, and relations with Japan were gradually restored. In 1950, a Japanese government overseas office was established, and two years later, Nippon Yusen resumed its regular route between Yokohama and Seattle for the first time in about 10 years.

Around this time, Japanese women who married American soldiers stationed in Japan came to the United States in large numbers. Many of them also emigrated to Washington State, forming women's associations to foster exchanges with the local community and Japanese people. Since the 1960s, many Japanese business people have been stationed in the Seattle area, and in 1971, the Shunjukai (now the Seattle Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry) established the Seattle Japanese Supplementary School, aiming to provide an educational setting where the children of Japanese expatriates could learn in Japanese.

Movements for compensation for Japanese Americans also began, with the Japanese American Compensation Act for eviction being enacted in 1948, and the Washington State Alien Land Law being repealed in 1966. Then, more than 40 years after the end of World War II, in August 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which specified that $20,000 in compensation would be paid to each surviving internment survivor, and formally apologized for the injustice of the forced removals. At the same time, the JACL, which had been lobbying for compensation for internment for many years and had been eagerly awaiting the passage of the bill, was holding its national convention in Seattle, and the delegation quickly headed to Washington DC to attend the ceremony.

According to the 2010 census (released in March 2012), the number of people in Washington State who answered that they were "Japanese" was 5.2% of the total, or 67,597, ranking third in the U.S. The generations are connected through the fourth and fifth generations, and the children and grandchildren of the "Shin-Issei" people who immigrated from Japan after the war are also born and raised as Americans.

Present-day Seattle (Photo: Author)

Notes:
1. In 1901, due to the growing population of Seattle, it was relocated to the city and became the Seattle Imperial Consulate.

*This article is a collaborative project with Seattle-based bilingual Japanese-English newspaper , The North American Post .

© 2013 Yaeko Inaba

Japanese Seattle United States Washington
About this series

Washington State has a history of Japanese Americans dating back more than 130 years. In the 2010 census, the state was ranked third in the nation for the number of people who answered that they were Japanese, behind California and Hawaii. There are many Japanese American organizations of all sizes in the state, centered around the state's largest city, Seattle. Cultural events are thriving throughout the year, including the Cherry Blossom Festival in April and the Autumn Festival in September, but what can the fourth and fifth generation Japanese Americans have inherited from the first generation immigrants who crossed the ocean during the Meiji era and passed on to the present? We followed their story from several perspectives.

*This series is a collaborative project with Seattle-based bilingual Japanese-English newspaper , The North American Post .

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About the Author

After graduating from Seijo University in Tokyo, she moved to Seattle, WA to study English. From March 2002 to July 2009, she worked as a bilingual reporter at The North American Post, the Pacific Northwest’s oldest Japanese American newspaper, and from 2004 she was the editor. After returning to Japan, she is involved with editing the English/Japanese bilingual free magazine WAttention, and currently works as a freelance writer, journalist, and translator. She has covered the history of Japanese Americans, business, politics, and travel for several media, including both print publications and online.
http://writer-yae.lolipop.jp/

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