Two days of history

---

Geo: 47.6353, -122.302

The conference started on Wednesday and so Hamish was busy being a grown up and Alan was left to explore Seattle on his own. This is a summary of two days, it's bit longer than usual, so bear with.

Like most major cities outside China there is a Chinatown and Seattle is no different, except that it is called the International District. The area also includes a number of East and South-East Asian communities. Chinatown proper has little which merits a second look. It has no "atmosphere" to speak of, at least not in the middle of the afternoon. But there was a good museum, the Wing Luke Asian Museum, which examines the Oriental and Pacific Asian cultures from the 1890s. There was an excellent tour which included rooms not open to the self-guiding visitors. We were shown an old grocery store, relocated to the present site when the owner decided to retire and closed up. It certainly looked, and smelled, authentic. On the first floor (second floor in the US, and indeed China) was an old hotel. They left the rooms and corridors pretty much as they were when the place closed down, except for renewing the wiring, reinforcing the floors and taking away the asbestos. The rooms, now emptied of most of the furniture, looked spacious. But, back then, whole families would live in one room (it was meant to be single occupancy).

The exhibition also touched on the Japanese internment during WWII. As the US was fighting Japan, ALL the Japanese people living in the country were sent to camps. By the 1940s, many of these 120,000 people were born in the States, or had been living there for decades. All were carted off and lost their homes, business and money. What was even more unfair was that many of those interned had sons and daughters fighting in the US army. During this time the US needed an ally in Asia, and China, together with its people, were friends. Thus ended years and years of exclusion, though the real end of exclusion wasn't until 1965 when the quota was lifted. Japantown was far bigger than Chinatown. Most of the Japanese immigrants were farmers and they supplied a lot of fresh produce to the Chinese.

By coincidence, the museum had a special exhibition on Bruce Lee. His wife is a Seattleite and he, together with his son, is buried in Seattle.

There is still a Japanese presence in the International District. The Uwajimaya, founded by one of the few returning interned Japanese men. It is now a large supermarket selling lots of wonderful things, with a food court and a community centre.

Not far away is the Pioneer Square district, which is really the original downtown of Seattle. Many of the buildings still standing date back to shortly after the Great Fire of 1889. So walking around the area is a bit like walking in a film set But there's nothing false about the area. It is certainly not the glitzy Downtown with shopping malls. Here are small independent shops and businesses. The architectural style is know as Richardsonian Romanesque - revivalist style named after Henry Richardson. The same style can be found in Chicago and Boston. Features of the style include Romanesque arches, decorations on columns and lintels and recessed doorways.

Next to the Pioneer Square is the Occidental Square . In fact it was hard to see where the boundaries were. I thought it was the same open space. St Mark's Square is said to be the "sitting-room" of Venice, Occidental Square is the sitting-room of vagabonds of Seattle, overlooked by a couple of totem poles. They might be down and out, and perhaps a little 'aromatic', but they weren't aggressive or threatening.

We have noticed there are a lot of homeless people hanging around street corners. That was true of Portland, too. Somehow they are more visible here as compared to London. There is a weekly publication called 'Real Change', similar to The Big Issue in London, or Dakloos in Amsterdam, where homeless people can earn some money by selling it. Whereas, we see Big Issue sellers all over London, I have only seen one here in Downtown Seattle.

In the neighbourhood is the Klondike Gold Rush Historic National Park. Yes, you've read it right, National Park. This, in fact, is a museum run by the US National Park Service. It is just a small museum about the 1896/7 gold rush to Canada but it was cleverly done. I like the use of story lines of real people who went on the adventure, one of whom is John Nordstrom, the owner of the famous Nordstrom department store. He made some money, came back and went into business with a friend and opened a shoe shop. The meteoric rise from that to the posh shop is another story. The journey to the Klondike was arduous, and not many people struck it rich, but even those who returned empty-handed thought it was a great experience and would do it again.

---

Photos

Gateway to Chinatown
Built about ten years ago. To comply with building and earthquake regulations, the foundation likes are 100 ft (33 m) deep and cost over a million dollars.

Interior of an old general store
A bequest to the Wing Luke Museum

Committee Room
Set up to depict a room in a community centre.

Cadillac Hotel
Saved from demolition after the earthquake in 1980s and now houses the Klondike Gold Rush Museum

Comments

[Etsuko & JC]

Looks like the time slip!