Tacoma Japantown
Tacoma Nisei Voices
Here is a partial list of links where you can listen to the voices of Tacoma Nisei, as they speak about their (or their parents’) lives in Tacoma’s historic Japantown.
Tacoma Japanese Language School Oral History Collection
A companion site to Tacoma Japantown and to the book Becoming Nisei, this online exhibit at the UW Tacoma Library hosts a selected number of interviews of former Tacoma Japanese Language School students, conducted by Professors Lisa Hoffman and Mary Hanneman.
California Revealed, Tetsu Ted Ishihara
The Ishihara family came from Japan, went to Idaho, and then to Tacoma to start a dry cleaning business.
Discover Nikkei, Toshio Inahara
In this oral history excerpt, Toshio Inahara speaks about his father’s sweet shop (manju-ya), called Fugetsu-do, at 1510 Broadway.
Densho has collected or perfomed a number of oral history interviews done with Tacoma Nisei, including:
UW Tacoma Community History Collection
Arlene Mihara, interview with Joe Kosai
Brenda Sonnier, interview of 3 Fujimoto sisters
Founding Stories of UW Tacoma (UWT Library)
Though not Nisei voices, these two interviews discuss Tacoma’s Japantown from the perspectives of descendants and public historians.
Tamiko Nimura and Michael Sullivan
Tacoma Public Library, Northwest Room
Joe Kosai and George Tanbara on the history of the Tacoma Buddhist Temple
The Tacoma Japanese Language School Reunion, 1977
In the program booklet for a reunion of the Tacoma Japanese Language School students in 1977, Nisei Seiichi Konzo recalls details of his childhood in Tacoma’s Nihonmachi.
Seiichi Konzo recalls, “Japanese businesses were confined to an eight-block area, with the greatest concentration along C Street and 15th Street. The Furuya Store (with branch bank) was the main mercantile store, and part of a six-store chain along the Coast. The Okamaru Store struggled valiantly to survive but finally succumbed to bankruptcy. The auctioneer who disposed of the merchandise lost his composure completely when he was handed several corsets and heavy hip padding to auction off. The Okada and Komuro Tailor shop was on the other side of the street, as was the Nishimoto watch repair shop. The Nishioka barber shop, with the always pleasant lady barber, was located towards 13th Street. In the other direction were located the Massasoit Hotel and a combination barber shop and Japanese baths. The Narahashi hand laundry operated at the corner of 15th and D Street. I would open the door, and Mrs. Narahashi would look up and say: “Irrashai” (welcome). “Togo, Seiichi-san is here.” Adults treated a ten-year-old boy with no condescension and as a grown-up.
“In early days, the partnership of Imada, Kurimoto, Nakamura, and Ariyoshi ran a successful Togo Market on C Street midway between 11th and 13th Streets. Mother worked there as a sales lady because her younger brother (Ariyoshi) was one of the partners. I was given a job on Saturdays in the early 1920’s, and earned about two dollars for a day that started at 8:00 a.m. and ended about 7:00 p.m. Mother had a special clientele of well-to-do matrons who insisted on having her select the vegetables. These rich spenders would buy as much as two dollars’ worth, and the contents filled two or three large paper sacks. These would be carried out to chauffeured cars and taken to chauffeured cars at the front and taken to north end mansions. Mother, whose knowledge of English was limited, would tell us that: ‘Selling vegetables at a market was easy, and English was no problem. When a customer appears, I would go to them and say ‘Samisen?”
“Dates, figs, prunes, and apricots were sold from large wooden boxes. Every time I went past the display, my quick hands would spear a loose fig or date and pop it in my mouth. My two dollars was take-home pay, but the prunes were a fringe benefit. When customers jammed the market, I was called on to wait on the customers. To this day I simply cannot understand why any matron would ask a twelve-year-old boy: ‘Are these potatoes good for baking?’ I had no more idea of what made a good baking potato than she had of mumbledy pegs, but any question deserved a good guess, so I always responded with an estimate.
“Later, after the death of my uncle, the partnership dissolved and mother worked at Imada’s grocery on 9th and D, up the street from the Pantages Theater and the movie house with the Wurlitzer organ. Still later, mother worked at the public market between 11th and 13th on D Street. This was a block-long open market where vegetables were sold at several displays, as well as meat, fish, and bakery products. About half of the operators were Japanese, and these included Horita, Kubo, Uyeda, Nakamura, and many others.
“One firm impression of those years is that everyone, husbands and wives, worked long and hard hours. Life was not easy. On the other hand, nobody starved or were on relief. Under current standards, many families, including our own, were near the poverty level. Somehow, in some fashion, they endured and made a living while raising their families. I can only recall pleasant and smiling faces as they shrugged off misfortunes with a simple ‘shikataganai’ (can’t be helped) and looked on their children with great expectations. Incidentally, the term ‘child abuse’ had no meaning in this immigrant society.
“Considering the fact that few Issei were educated beyond middle or upper schools in Japan, it was a source of amazement to me that they practically worshipped the idea of providing education for their children. It made little sense, for example, for the son of a hard-working widow to go to college, when the lumber mills were nearby, let alone to graduate study. The sacrifices that these immigrants made for their offspring seemed to be based on the notion that the improvement of the lot of their children was the main reason for existence.”
Photo credit: Washington State Historical Society. “A large group of Japanese American male and female children, and a few adults, members of the Sunday school of the Japanese Methodist Episcopal Church, Tacoma, WA, stand on a vacant lot, the future church site. Dated May 6, 1928. Yamane Family Collection. Later became Whitney Memorial Methodist Church.”
