By David Scherer Water
Japanese shipwreck survivors are known to have reached the Washington coast as early as the 1830s.
In the decades following, Japanese immigrants worked in local fishing, lumber and railroad construction. By the early 20th century, Japanese families had become a small but established part of Olympia's community.
All U.S. immigration from Japan was completely cut off in 1924 amid a growing, fanatical fear of a Japanese takeover. In June of 1942, 13,391 U.S. residents of Japanese heritage were forcibly removed from Washington state.
Most of those residents from Olympia were sent to camps in Idaho or near Tule Lake, California. Notably, none of Olympia’s far larger population of German and Italian residents were treated in this manner. It remains unclear how many of Olympia’s displaced Japanese residents ever returned.
Meanwhile, the same week that Olympia residents of Japanese ancestry were removed, the town experienced not one, but two incidents of self-inflicted accidental aerial carnage.
First, a small fighter plane from McChord came smoking out of the sky, sideswiped St. Peter’s Hospital and crashed to the street in flames. The pilot died in the hospital he partially destroyed. One military policeman helping in the rescue operation was knocked unconscious when he touched a downed power line and deputy sheriff Ed Stearns was “thrown to the ground by an exploding bullet.” The second fatal aerial incident occurred only a few hours later when a second single-pilot plane crashed into the prairie between Olympia and Yelm.
It is equally unclear whether the wartime treatment of Olympia's Japanese residents influenced the city's later enthusiasm for a Japanese sister-city relationship.
In 1981, Olympia and the City of Yashiro became sister cities, and in 1990, the city opened Yashiro Gardens on Plum Street to cement the partnership. Yashiro donated a large granite lantern to the new garden and renamed its main thoroughfare "Olympia Avenue.” Olympia reciprocated with a wooden sculpture of an orca. A duplicate is still on display at Percival Landing today. In 2004, the city named the 4th Avenue Bridge "The Olympia-Yashiro Friendship Bridge.”
On Monday, June 1, with the sale of the Justice Center site to the Squaxin Island Tribe, Olympia closed Yashiro Japanese Garden and moved the lantern into storage. City officials say the lantern will eventually find a new home, preserving a friendship that has already outlived the city it was originally built to honor.
In 2006, Yashiro technically ceased to exist when it merged with two neighboring towns and renamed itself Kato City. The sister-city status officially remains intact, though Olympia's municipal plaques have not been updated to reflect the new name.
Olympia’s Japanese community holds its annual Bon Odori Festival in August. At the heart of the festival are practices that honor ancestors. Participants set paper lanterns onto the water and join in dances, temporarily making sense of a history the city otherwise leaves unrevised on its bronze plaques.
For 10 years, David Scherer Water played Dr. Roger Sty Bantam, host of Healing Journey, a New Age guided meditation series that accidentally acquired sponsorship from Pfizer. You can listen to old episodes here.
Editor's note: Sources for the 1942 aircraft incidents and the early Japanese shipwreck account are drawn from Rogues, Buffoons, and Statesman by Gordon Newell, 1975 page 420-421.
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BobJacobs
1) The merge of Yashiro with some other small nearby towns was reported to have been done at the direction of the Japanese federal government.
2) Some people of German and Italian descent on the east coast were mistreated during WWII. I have never seen any details, but it appears that far fewer people were involved than the west coast people of Japanese descent.
Bob Jacobs
Wednesday, June 3 Report this
Snevets
Thank you for sharing this important history.
Thursday, June 4 Report this