(Short video panning over the Pacific Northwest of the United States, zooming over the silver-blue waters of Commencement Bay, coming up towards the buildings of Tacoma’s downtown. The glacial shoulders of Mount Rainier appear on sunny days when, as the locals say, “the mountain is out.” A montage of downtown Tacoma next: a collection of tall buildings, decrepit parking garages, beautifully ageing repurposed brick buildings of the University of Washington alongside concrete monstrosities, vibrant murals, and repurposed historic storefront galleries; antique shops, museums, and theatres.)
Welcome to Tacoma, Washington, USA, my adopted hometown. Tacoma is the third-largest city in Washington State, after our “big sister” city that gets all the attention, Seattle. We’re not bitter about that, most of the time. Unlike some cities, we pride ourselves in our working-class roots, in our union-strong ethos, in the groundedness and rough-and-tumbleness of our nickname, “Grit City.” Seated on the traditional, now stolen, lands of the Puyallup and Coast Salish tribes.
I’m Tamiko Nimura, your guide for today. I’m an Asian American (half-Japanese American, half-Filipina) creative nonfiction writer and public historian. My Japanese American father died when I was ten years old, and in many ways, I’ve been chasing a conversation with him for most of my life. One way has been through learning, writing, and speaking about Japanese American history, especially the history of Japanese American wartime incarceration. During World War II, U.S. President Roosevelt authorized the forced removal of more than 125,000 persons of Japanese descent (two-thirds of them American-born citizens) from the West Coast of the United States. Entire communities, including women and children, reduced their homes and belongings to what they could carry. The government and military imprisoned them in remote, desolate locations. My 10-year-old Japanese American father, his parents, and his five siblings were among those imprisoned behind barbed wire for close to four years.
I grew up in northern California in the 1970s and 80s in a predominantly White and Latinx suburb, which meant that my visits to Japantowns in Sacramento and San Francisco were especially precious. Japantowns were where we got our special groceries for meals, especially family holiday meals like New Year’s. Japantowns were where we saw people who looked like us, who also spoke a mixture of Japanese and English. Japantowns held festivals honouring the souls of our dead, and summer temple bazaars where we ripped open steaming bags of freshly grilled teriyaki chicken. Where we could eat boxes of Botan rice candy and fold origami cranes made from the brightly coloured paper we bought at the Japanese import stores. Most importantly, Japantowns were where we could feel community and belonging.
A decade ago, I found out that Tacoma, Washington, where I’d lived for ten years already, had had a Japantown lost to wartime incarceration. The story of Tacoma’s lost Japantown is one that pulled me into the tensions between remembering and forgetting, and it has never quite let me go. Even though my Northern California-based family was not among the 700+ persons of Japanese descent who were forced to leave their homes in 1942, the Tacoma Japanese ended up in the same place where my father and his family were: at a windswept, remote concentration camp with 18,000 other prisoners near the Oregon/California border called Tule Lake.
What you’ll see today lives in that tension between erasure and restoration, between forgetting and remembering. We’ll stay largely within the boundaries of Tacoma’s historic Japantown, a core of about 12 blocks. The downtown streets are built on one side of a steep large hill. When the Tacoma Mall opened in 1965, it really gutted the downtown retail core—an area that had made way for the automobile in the 1950s and the big department stores never returned. Even though there are a few descendants of those early Japanese Americans living in the area, I still feel the haunting of Tacoma’s Japantown each day.
Tours usually exist to see what is there, but most of this tour will be showing you what’s not there anymore. Because of the structural erasure, because Americans are so good at forgetting, this is a different kind of tour.
We’re going to move from presence pretty quickly into absence.
STOP 1: Tacoma Buddhist Temple/Japanese Language School foundation
(Projection screen rolls up, and two photos appear side by side.
LEFT: Colour photo of a four-storey light brick building set on a hillside, with a small pine tree in front.
RIGHT: Colour photo of a concrete foundation marked with graffiti, set against a grassy hillside. Pine and cherry tree at the top of the hill.)
If we had advance permission to enter now, I could show you just how important the Temple is, a blend of “American” church architecture and Jodo Shinshu Buddhist altar adornments. We could walk in and peek into the hondo with its wooden pews. Those stained-glass windows on the left there, with wisteria and lotus flowers were donated by the Fujimoto sisters, daughters of one of the Japanese community leaders. And we could see the narrow, red-carpeted hallway lined with mostly black-and-white photographs of the Temple’s history. Japanese American baseball teams, Buddhist conference gatherings, and a list of the many community founders of the Temple from 1929.
After a couple of temporary homes—one in nearby Fife and one on the ground floor of the Lorenz Hotel around the corner— the sangha raised funds amongst themselves to build this permanent structure just before the Depression hit.
In the summer, the block in front of the Temple is closed off, and hundreds of people swarm the area, laying blankets on the grass, lawn chairs on the pavement. Taiko players beat their drums in the middle of the street. Circles of dancers in jewel-tone yukatas and kimonos raise their arms in graceful arcs; it’s a gorgeous moving sculpture of arms undulating and waving their folding fans in the air. Children run around in happi coats and lick melted shaved ice off their knuckles.
For now, though, I can tell you that the Temple is the one remaining institution, the one remaining building, from Tacoma’s historic Japantown that is still serving the city’s tiny Japanese American community.
Across the street from the Temple, there’s the foundation of the Tacoma Japanese Language School, or the Nihongo gakko. The Nisei would go to “regular” American school, and then after school every day they would walk to the Japanese language school for another two hours to learn language, culture, penmanship, and calligraphy.
In 2004, after over a decade of ownership, the University demolished the language school, deeming it unfit and too expensive for historic preservation and repair. It was a controversial decision. I know that besides me, there are still community members, including non-Japanese folks, who shake their heads over the fact that the University promised to create a commemorative garden on the site of the language school.
STOP 2: Tacoma Convention Centre/Centre of Japantown
(Two photos. LEFT: Black and white photo of a city street: brick buildings, large automobiles, from the 1940s.
RIGHT: Colour contemporary photo of a city street: on the left, a parking lot stretching over half a block leading to the city’s fanciest hotel, some 15+ storeys tall, with a huge emerald glass arch out front and inside, a whole art collection of glass sculptures: twisting colourful chandeliers, icebergs, fish, and flowers.)
The black-and-white photo was taken at the centre of Tacoma’s historic Japantown. If we look closer at signs on the buildings, though, there’s the name “M. Furuya” on that building on the right, and “Japan” on part of another building. The Kanji on the Furuya building is spidery, graceful, a column of flourishes and swirls snaking down the right-hand side. There are signs.
Tacoma then would have had dozens of businesses operated by Japanese immigrants: import stores, hotels, restaurants, barber shops, even sweet shops and photography studios. By some accounts, it was the largest Japantown per capita on the West Coast, and it was concentrated largely in this downtown core.
Stop 3: Crystal Palace/Parking Lot
(Two photos. LEFT: Black-and-white interior picture of a place called the Crystal Palace. White columns inside, rows of arched windows at the top of each floor. Booth after booth of farm fresh produce and butchered meats and flowers.
RIGHT: Colour photo of an asphalt parking lot. Looks as if a giant had reached down, roughly scooped out a chunk of the hillside, patted down the ground to make it level.)
Seattle is famous for its open-air market, Pike Place Market. We had a food hall like this, too. Japanese American farmers from the neighbouring city of Fife would come and sell their produce here. I have heard from a descendant who knows which stall number was her relative’s produce stall.
In my research, I learnt that our region’s most well-known pan-Asian supermarket, Uwajimaya started here, even though they’re headquartered in Seattle now. Mr. Moriguchi started in Tacoma, selling fish cakes out of his truck. We could have had an Uwajimaya, I thought. Though a farmers market returns every summer to Tacoma’s downtown, I still miss what we could have had: the presence of a Pike Place Market, a food hall, a grocery store.
Stop 4: Lorenz Hotel/KOZ on Market
(Two photos. LEFT: Black and white photo of a cream 4-storey hotel built into a hill on a street corner. There are wood-framed windows and a turret at the top left corner, like a castle. The street level is mostly windows. There is a group of young Japanese American women in western dress, seated in front of the windows.
RIGHT: Colour photo of a modern white apartment building with many small windows.)
A few years ago, local historian Michael Sullivan hired me to do a deep-dive research project on the history of one building in Tacoma’s downtown core. I had always driven by it as a one-story dilapidated Daybreak Star Center. The developers were building micro apartments for university students. The existing building was going to be demolished, but the City of Tacoma required the developers to do historic mitigation work. That’s where we came in.
To tell the story of this corner, Michael and I looked at newspapers on microfilm, city directories, and sepia photographs of the Tacoma Buddhist Temple, some two blocks away. We learnt that the building was a hotel with two top storeys that had burned in a fire. The windows in the photographs—identical to those inside the Buddhist Temple now—told us that the building was also the second location of the Buddhist Temple. We learnt that the building once had a jujitsu studio, and even the family of a Chinese apothecary who watched in sadness as the United States government evicted their Japanese American neighbours from their homes during the war. Later, one of the few Japanese Americans who returned opened a small grocery store there. That was the year I learnt how the story of one place—not the story of an individual, or an event—could be fascinating.
Stop 5: Rialto Grocery/curtained-over storefront
(Two photos. LEFT: Black-and-white photo of a smiling middle-aged Japanese woman stands in a Western dress in the doorway of a small grocery storefront on the corner. A small Coca-Cola advertisement stands in the window.
RIGHT: Colour present-day photo of the same city street corner, with a white building built into a hill. All the windows from that storefront are covered with black curtains inside.
Here’s the Rialto Grocery Store operated by Japanese immigrant Kiyo Butsuda. Her son Clint, or “Yosh,” remembers working at the store as a child and using the restroom inside the Rialto Theatre since they didn’t have one at the store. I had driven past that corner so many times, and never knew it was once a grocery store. The Butsuda family lived with a few other Japanese American families across the Foss Waterway on the Tideflats, where the father worked for the St. Paul and Tacoma lumber mill. Kiyo’s granddaughter Lynette shared this photograph with me a few years ago. She has never been to Tacoma, though I hope she’ll visit someday.
On 17 and 18 May 1942, the Butsuda family, along with seven hundred other Japanese Americans, travelled across downtown to the train station. For many of them, it was just across the street from the neighbourhood where they had lived, worked, and played. They had packed just what they could carry. Local newspapers showed pictures of Japanese Americans smiling cheerfully and waving bravely for the cameras; armed military personnel were shown to be “helping” people onto the train and assisting them with their luggage. Headlines tried to show that they were just “for the duration of the war.”
Pictures taken by a Richards Studio photographer whom the community had frequently hired for events and portraits told a different story. At the station, a toddler girl stared stoically and openly at the camera, standing barely higher than the brown paper bags she was carrying.
Stop 6: “Maru”
(Photo: A 9-foot tall bronze sculpture that looks like the framing of an empty space shaped like the full moon, or the sun. A few red Japanese maples next to the sculpture, and some granite boulders and plaques dedicated to the former Japanese language school.)
Former students from the Japanese language school and their descendants collaborated with the University of Washington Tacoma to commission this sculpture by Seattle-based Japanese American artist Gerard Tsutakawa. The sculpture was meant to commemorate the language school that the University had deemed unimportant to preserve.
“Maru” is beautiful, but the concrete foundation of the language school is derelict. And in the last few years, I’ve heard from students at the University that they never knew about the Japanese American history of their campus, despite the presence of “Maru”, the monument. A book, a digital exhibit, a monument does not seem to be enough. And I have to wonder how many students, faculty, and staff pass by this sculpture and don’t give it a second thought; I’ve heard that often in the last two years.
I think about when I first learnt about Tacoma’s Japantown in 2014, the evening after the dedication ceremony for “Maru.” It took so much work, so many months, so many community members to get “Maru” completed and dedicated. I’ll never forget walking up to the memorial dedication ceremony in 2014. So many Japanese American faces—many more than I’d ever seen in my 10 years living in this city. They had returned to see each other and to see a tangible marker of their time before the war.
Later that night, doing research for the first time on the language school, I found a map, hand-drawn, and pen-inked by the Japanese journalist Kazuo Ito. Downtown Tacoma blocks and familiar numbered streets—9th, 10th, all the way down to 17th—but so many Japanese names. Furuyama Florist. Tokyo Grocery. Fuji 10-Cent Store. Block after block of Japanese names I didn’t recognize; none of these existed in my present-day city.
(Screen goes dark, photos disappear.)
I feel a deep loss for a community that could still be here today. I think about how the Japantowns I grew up around in Sacramento and San Francisco could have welcomed me when I moved here.
I think about that lost open-air market, the Crystal Palace, and how different this area is now. Downtown is a food desert for thousands of residents, workers, and students today. It’s never fully recovered from what happened during the war.
What I know now is that only one in seven Japanese Americans—a little over a hundred—returned to Tacoma after the war. Those that did so faced an uphill battle to survive. Racist laws and lawmakers prevented the Tacoma Japanese (and others around the country) from owning land before the war, and the Issei were not able to gain citizenship until the 1950s. So very few had any houses or businesses to return to. Their belongings, stored in the Buddhist temple and the Japanese language school, had been vandalized or looted. The downtown neighbourhood where they had once lived had changed; new owners had taken over many of the businesses that they had operated.
I’m worried about the future of the Buddhist temple; it is surrounded by the footprint of the University of Washington Tacoma. UWT is creating its master plan for the next few years. It’s why I wanted to document the Temple’s history and tell it for a broader audience, and in 2018, my colleague Justin Wadland and I co-authored an online encyclopaedia article about the history of the Temple, with assistance from the sangha, and presented it for a community audience at the temple. I’ve created a full digital exhibit about the neighbourhood, complete with descendant photos and maps, and it’s hosted by the University Library. Two of the University faculty members have written a book based on interviews with the former students of the language school. I have spoken to campus, community members, and city government officials about the history of Tacoma’s Japantown and stressed the importance of preserving the Temple.
I wonder why, to this day, the research that Michael and I did about the Lorenz Hotel has stayed in a file in the City of Tacoma Historic Preservation office. To the best of our knowledge, the building developer has not included any interpretive material in the building that shows that history. The building’s history is in danger, once again, of erasing that Japanese American presence. The students who live in that building may never know that they live in an important part of the city’s Japanese American history.
That Kazuo Ito map forever changed my image of Tacoma. For me, Japantown’s absence now feels like an aching presence. We were once a Japanese American city; this is what we were, this is something like what we could have had. I had known that I was on stolen Native American land with a sedimented history of dispossession and displacement. I still don’t know what it will take to keep this history alive. But I had never known before that a map could break my heart.
