1916-1945

Hisako Kato on the Fire Escape of the Northwestern Hotel, Circa 1950, Contributed by Kenneth Kato

Nisei Basketball Team Members, 1939, Contributed by Lynn (Oka) Dwyer

“...there was a name, I thought we gave it a Japanese, there was a Japanese name where you dig holes, one, two, three, four, five, like a cross, and you shoot to get your marble into the hole. And I know we did a lot of that, marbles, playing marbles.”

- George Yamada, Densho Foundation Interview, 2006

By the time George Yamada was a child in the 1920s and 30s, many Japanese Americans, including families living in the city of Spokane, were concentrated around Trent Alley. During this period, many of the first American-born Japanese in Spokane were born. This generation are known as Nisei. As the number of children grew, a Japanese language school formed at the Methodist Church, as did community gatherings featuring Japanese performances including dancing and Japanese instruments, like the koto. While Japanese children often attended public schools, many extracurricular activities, like recreational sports, took place in segregated spaces. As Nisei grew into adulthood, farms and other property could be purchased in their names, as Alien Land Laws only applied to foreign-born Americans.

Like the Chinese Americans before them, Japanese Americans ran several types of services including laundromats and retail stores. During this period, many Japanese Spokanites found a niche operating hotels catering to the migrant workforce flowing in and out of Spokane in the first half of the 20th century. Although a new generation was coming of age, the Japanese American population in Spokane remained relatively flat until World War II. During the War, Japanese Americans along the West Coast were detained in large incarceration camps. Those that lived east of the Columbia River in Washington state, however, were spared from the camps. By 1943, Japanese Americans could apply to leave the camps if they were willing to resettle in cities, like Spokane, which were outside the Exclusion Zone. As a result, Spokane’s Japanese American population grew to well-over 1000 by the time World War II ended.