Where Is Tacoma's 'Chinatown'?

Tak Nam landed in San Francisco in 1852, when he was 16, in the first wave of Chinese immigrants seeking what they called Gum San—Gold Mountain. Lum May and his wife arrived later, in 1875, moving to Tacoma the following year. The gold rush was a bust for most miners, and many Chinese laborers worked in depleted mines that produced very little. After Congress passed the 1862 Railroad Act to promote the creation of a transcontinental railroad, Chinese miners joined new workers coming from China to take advantage of plentiful work building rails throughout the West. When that work dried up, many found employment in the timber industry, vineyards, farms, construction, and canneries. Some who spoke English became merchants, opening laundries, shops, and other businesses in cities throughout the West.

Immigrants were coming to the U.S. from all over the globe, but Chinese immigrants drew attention as the most foreign in custom and appearance. Fear of these foreigners bred racist stereotypes of Chinese immigrants as criminals and immoral opium addicts who sexually preyed on white women. Chinese women were presumed prostitutes. These stereotypes became so commonly accepted that U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Brewer would later refer to Chinese immigrants in a court opinion as “the obnoxious Chinese” and “this distasteful class.”

As Chinese labor and commerce were building the West, anti-Chinese hatred grew along with it. The nascent labor movement in the U.S. resented that Chinese workers were often willing to work for low wages, as it didn’t take much to have a better life than what they had left behind and still send money back to family in China. When the U.S. struggled through a lengthy depression in the 1870s, many white workers blamed Chinese immigrants for taking jobs. Unions fomented anti-Chinese actions, including harassment and threats against Chinese workers and destruction of their camps. Violent mobs swept Chinese residents out of their communities, spurred on by mayors, governors, judges, newspaper editors, even wealthy ranchers and timbermen whose anti-Chinese hatred outstripped their desire for cheap labor. Between 1850 and 1906, there were close to 200 roundups of Chinese Americans from towns in the Pacific Northwest, Rocky Mountain states, Oregon, and California, even in Los Angeles, where a mob in the throes of racist fervor hanged 19 Chinese men and boys in October 1871, the largest mass lynching in U.S. history. Western territories and states enacted anti-Chinese laws. California instituted a foreign miners’ tax targeting Chinese miners, and many states restricted property ownership and business licenses. The federal 1875 Page Act banned almost all Chinese women from entering the United States, making it nearly impossible for Chinese workers to have families and establish roots. In 1879, California passed a law forbidding any company from using Chinese labor. Under increasing pressure, Congress in 1882 passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which forbade most new immigration from China. It was the first time a U.S. law had restricted immigration by targeting a specific nationality. The act was repealed in 1943, but its passage paved the way for many laws to follow over the next 140 years to selectively control the flow of undesired migrants into the U.S.

The Exclusion Act emboldened local vigilantes, who used extralegal means in attempting to eliminate the thousands of Chinese immigrants living and working in the U.S. In September 1885, in Rock Springs, Wyo., white mine workers trying to unionize burned buildings in the small city’s Chinatown neighborhood and murdered 28 Chinese miners. That same month, three Chinese hop pickers in Squak Valley (now Issaquah) in Washington Territory were murdered by white and Native American farmworkers angry over wages. A mob near Newcastle, east of Seattle, burned the barracks of 36 Chinese coal miners.

In 1885, Tacoma was on the verge of explosive growth as the western terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Chinese residents, many of whom had worked building the railroad, made up 10% of the city’s population of 7,000. Most lived along Commencement Bay in an area north of downtown called Little Canton, on land leased from the railroad company. Little Canton was the Chinese community hub, but numerous blocks along Railroad Avenue (now Commerce Street) contained Chinese-owned shops, laundries, small eateries, a Chinese school, and a Chinese garden.

Many white Tacomans resented the burgeoning Chinese community in their midst. Throughout 1885, the Knights of Labor organized efforts to expel Chinese workers from Washington Territory, particularly from Tacoma and Seattle. Encouraged by the Northern California town of Eureka’s success in forcing out Chinese workers earlier that year, Tacoma’s mayor, Jacob Weisbach, a German immigrant and president of the Anti-Chinese League, galvanized Tacoma community leaders to plan the expulsion of Tacoma’s Chinese residents. Known as the Group of 15, they held mass meetings in October, telling the town that its Chinese residents were a public health nuisance, and gave public notice that “Chinese Must Go” by Nov. 1. The threat was effective: Nearly 500 Chinese residents left the city.

At midmorning on Nov. 3, two days past Weisbach’s deadline, hundreds of white men gathered near the Chinese quarter. The mob went door to door in Little Canton and through the streets of the city, dragging people out of their homes, forcing customers from Chinese businesses, and trashing their merchandise. The mob herded 200 Chinese residents to 7th Street and Pacific Avenue, then forced them at gunpoint to walk eight miles south to Lakeview railway station, in what is now Lakewood. After a miserable night unsheltered in the freezing rain, those who could pay for a ticket boarded a train to Portland the next morning. Others got on a freight train when it passed through the station or trudged down the railroad tracks. The following day, Chinese businesses throughout the city were ransacked and destroyed. Little Canton was burned to the ground.

Though culturally marginized, Chinese immigrants had become adept at using the U.S. legal system to fight back against racist laws and vigilante violence. In Tacoma, the Chinese community anticipated the roundup and had planned for legal action. On Nov. 5, they asked the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco to arrest the mob’s leaders, including the mayor, the chief of police, two councilmen, a probate court judge, and the president of the YMCA, along with carpenters, butchers, blacksmiths, plumbers, and farmers. They also filed civil claims against the federal government for compensation of more than $100,000 in lost property.

In his sworn court affidavit, Lum May recounted, “I saw my country men marched out of Tacoma on November 3rd. They presented a sad spectacle. Some had lost their trunks, some their blankets, some were crying for their things. ... A few of the Chinese merchants, I among them, were offered to remain in Tacoma for two days in order to pack up our goods or what was left of them.”

Another Chinese merchant, Kwok Sue, described Nov. 3: “I became frightened, left, went away, and went out into the Country about a mile and a half from town to an Indian Agency, where I remained till the 5th, when I saw the fire of the burning Chinatown. My store was burnt with the rest of the Chinese buildings.”

Twenty-seven local residents who had organized the expulsion were indicted, arrested, and jailed, but the Tacoma community quickly raised $5,000 to post their bail, cheering them as heroes when they were released. The charges were ultimately dismissed, and no one was ever held responsible.

A popular publication of the time, the Overland Monthly, used the phrase “The Tacoma Method,” lauding Tacoma citizens’ “determination to rid the community of a public curse, chiefly Chinese” while avoiding “even the appearance of riot or violence.”

The Chinese population of Tacoma never recovered.

“In 1880, Chinese migrants were the largest immigrant group in Tacoma, which is saying something because Tacoma was an immigrant city,” says Gomez. “By 1890, there were 18 people who were foreign-born in China in all of Pierce County. Almost certainly none of them lived in Tacoma.”

Chinese residents began reappearing in Tacoma in 1920, but the vibrant Chinese community that comprised Little Canton never returned. As Perry points out: “There’s no Chinatown here.” Tacoma has “an amazing flourishing Korean community, a strong Southeast Asian community, Vietnamese, Cambodian. No such thing among Chinese.”

It was David Murdoch, a Canadian pastor who moved from Seattle to Tacoma in 1982, who unearthed this unsavory piece of Tacoma’s history.

After learning about the expulsion through a search of old newspapers, he petitioned the city in 1991 to create a park that would both acknowledge its history and encourage a tolerant community, writing, “If old wounds are not healed, new generations cannot be expected to flourish.” The city responded by organizing a citizens’ advisory committee, including Puget Sound Professor Emerita Suzanne Wilson Barnett, and the Chinese Reconciliation Project Foundation was born.

“We wanted to make sure this project is not just a memorial. It had to mean more to the community,” says Theresa Pan Hosley Hon.’15, CRPF president for more than 25 years, who has led the effort to build the park. “We want to show how we can look back in the past and try to reconcile, and how we can move forward to embrace Tacoma’s diversity. And make our community more welcoming.”

The park formally opened in 2010. Though it is still not finished, the ongoing process is almost as meaningful. “We are talking with our neighbors, with our fellow citizens, with our representatives,” says Perry. “It’s very cathartic in a way. We are all learning different pieces of this history and trying to make amends.”

The park sits on the edge of Commencement Bay, sandwiched between the water and the railroad tracks, not far from the former site of Little Canton. Shorebirds float above, and seasonal salmon run under the String of Pearls bridge and into the grotto that bisects the park. The calm is occasionally punctuated, appropriately, by passing trains.

Every element of the park is designed to spark awareness, reflection, and compassion in those who spend time there: the silhouettes of expelled Chinese workers carved into life-size rocks; the 27 black pillars that symbolize those indicted for the expulsion; the graceful ting (pavilion) donated by Tacoma’s Chinese sister city, Fuzhou, that overlooks the water.

The park is a hub for festivals and rallies, and has hosted visiting dignitaries from China, but most days it is busy with joggers, strollers, exercise classes, even weddings. As part of its mission to bring the larger Tacoma community together, the CRPF produces the annual Moon Festival, an autumn celebration of Asian traditions that embraces Tacoma’s many immigrant communities. Students from Gomez’s and Perry’s classes often volunteer to help with the festival.

Perry also brings her classes to the park. “Students are really interested in identity, not only their own but their friends’ and their community,” she says. “We want to learn about differences but also about similarities, and it helps to have a physical place to visit and tell the stories.”

Other communities have made efforts to atone for anti-Chinese hatred. In Wyoming, a memorial stone near the site of the 1885 Rock Springs massacre lists the names of the 28 murdered Chinese miners. In Seattle, plans are underway for an art installation memorializing the 1886 riot and roundup of hundreds of Seattle’s Chinatown residents. Antioch, Calif., is creating a Chinatown Historic District where Chinese residents were expelled and buildings burned to the ground. But Tacoma’s park is distinctive in its mission to celebrate the city’s diversity and to foster an inclusive community. Recent rises in anti-immigrant violence, especially against Asian Americans, reinforce the need for that vision. “It’s why the park is important,” says Gomez. “It’s a reminder that these things are a part of our city, and if you don’t take those sorts of warnings seriously, they can happen again.”

The Tacoma expulsion was successful not just because an organized and violent group was determined to expel Chinese residents, but because many people were indifferent to their neighbors’ plight and didn’t speak up. Silence has contributed to many acts of racial hatred in U.S. history, including the forced expulsion of Japanese Americans into incarceration camps during WWII. “But today, we have a lot of voices,” says Pan Hosley. “We need to educate people, to make people understand and aware of what happened, and what could happen if we don’t do something. Education works. I’m not discouraged.”