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SF: Another really important institution in the community I think was the Language, I'm sorry, the Japanese Association. Could you kind of describe what, how it was organized, what things the Japanese Association did and what were other roles it played?

FM: Yeah, I haven't studied the history of the Japanese Association here in the Seattle area as closely as I might, mainly because the stuff is written in Japanese and it's an effort for me to read it. But anyway it appears to have gotten organized quite early and the Japanese Associations flourished not only here in Seattle, but in Tacoma, and Spokane, Portland, down in the White River Valley and so on. So the history book tells us about these, not only the Seattle Japanese Association, but the one in Yakima and Tacoma and so on, and so on, and there's a whole collection of them. The organization began here, mainly because of the community, they really had politically-minded people emerging who felt that it was desirable to have some kind of overseer organization of the community among other things. For example, the Japan, the Japanese Language School needed to be organized and so here is an occasion where leaders of the community would get together, not merely to organize the language school, but to bring the community support behind this kind of an effort. And various types of problems arose which called for community organization and what you have then is a fairly early development of an interest in organized activity, which by 1910, I believe, certainly by 1910, perhaps as early as 1905, created the basis for a Japanese Association.

The Association was intended to serve primarily in the beginning as a kind of social welfare organization for the immigrant population. In Japan of course, the communities were organized for social welfare support, and in this country, apart from the churches there was, there was of course the larger community social welfare programs, but the Japanese felt the need for something within their own community and the Japanese Association then became the provider for that. But beyond welfare, then they found discrimination was a problem and so they get a political orientation. The Language School becomes a concern and so there's not only the Language School, but school orientation generally. Educational programs then come under consideration and as I said, the business association gets organized into the Japanese Association. So there were about four or five main departments so to speak, built into the Japanese Association, and each one then would look after that aspect of the community and thereby tie it in together under one umbrella organization. As for -- and there were plenty of people who were sufficiently interested in political activism of one kind or another to be involved in this type of thing. On the other hand, there were many others in the community who were not politically-minded or didn't feel that this kind of thing was of interest, was not the kind of thing they wanted to be involved in and so, you had a fairly large part of the community population being largely disinterested in, or indifferent to the Japanese Association. And it was often said that the Association is made up of windbags and people who are power hungry. On the other hand every now and then, the community as a whole would call, or would turn to the Japanese Association as the means by which they would carry on a joint community effort on whatever was needed. So there was this kind of ambivalent feeling in the community as a whole, as to what the Japanese Association was there for. My own assessment is that the Association played an important part in the community. The other thing we should, cannot forget is that the Association also was hooked into the Japanese Consulate and for one thing, whenever an immigrant Issei wanted to visit Japan for instance, it was necessary to get a visa or passport privilege and the Japanese Association had a function in that regard.

SF: Did the Japanese Association support sort of patriotic efforts? Were they involved in things like the Emperor's Birthday celebration, that kind of thing?

FM: Yes. Yeah. They were not, yeah. I, I don't know if they were thought of as patriotic efforts, but it was felt that as Japanese, as, yeah, as Japanese citizens essentially, Japanese nationals, it was important that they carry on these usual functions of Japanese society, including the celebration of the Emperor's Birthday, etc. So they did, yes. And there were regular meetings of this, affairs of this kind for those occasions. And in this connection the Nippon Kan Hall, which still exists as a building, came to function in an extremely important role. It became the meeting place for all kinds of functions of the Japanese Association when community people were called together.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.