Japanese-Americans dwindling
in South Sound

Cultural ties fraying as community ages, children move away

EIJIRO KAWADA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally published March 3, 2002

TACOMA -- About 40 parishioners gathered at Tacoma Hongwanji Buddhist Church on a recent Sunday. More than half were elderly second-generation Japanese Americans. Few were in their 20s, 30s or 40s.

Some children in the group had interracial parents. Several Caucasian parishioners sat in back rows of the venerable Japanese-American church, which was established in 1916.

The dwindling number of parishioners -- and the aging profile of the group -- reflects what is happening throughout the South Sound.

Japanese-Americans and their homeland culture are disappearing.

Younger Japanese-Americans are marrying people of other races. Waves of new immigrants from Japan have subsided. The population is aging.

"It's kind of sad," said Toyoko Nakagawara, 79. "The majority of 'sansei' (third-generation Japanese-Americans) have college education, and they left Tacoma for jobs."

The Japanese-American population is declining across Pierce County for the first time in half a century. It decreased by 10 percent in the past decade, from 3,966 in 1990 to 3,571 in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Tacoma shows similar numbers. There were 1,146 Japanese-Americans in Tacoma in 1990, and 996 in 2000.

Across the nation, the number decreased by 8 percent between 1990 and 2000.

Other groups growing

That's in contrast to the growth of virtually every other demographic group in the South Sound, the state and nation.

"We are the only Asian-American group showing a decline," said John Tateishi, director of the Japanese American Citizens League's national headquarters in San Francisco.

Filipinos are the biggest Asian-American group in Washington, followed by Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

"Whether or not we are still going to be around two or three generations down the road, I don't know," Tateishi said. "But this phenomenon gives us a chance to redefine ourselves as a community."

The 2000 Census shows the overall Asian population increased by almost 40 percent in Washington between 1990 and 2000: Indians (people from the nation of India) grew by 65 percent; Vietnamese by 59 percent; Chinese by 43 percent; Koreans by 36 percent and Filipinos by 33 percent.

But the number of Japanese-Americans grew by less than 5 percent. Most of the increase was in the Seattle area as people moved there for jobs.

Instead of a steady stream of immigrants, the Japanese-American population has fluctuated in Washington throughout the state's 113-year history, affected both by a war and by the economy.

The first decrease in the Japanese population occurred in the 1930s when many second-generation Japanese Americans went to Japan to study and never came back, said Ron Magden, a retired Tacoma Community College history professor.

Also in the 1930s, a large number of Japanese-Americans migrated to the Midwest and East Coast for skilled jobs, Magden said.

War fractured ties

Then came World War II. The U.S. government rounded up Japanese-Americans and put them in concentration camps across the nation.

"Japanese communities that existed before the war disintegrated while they were in the camps," Magden said.

After 1950, the Japanese population started coming back up. The majority of the increase was Japanese women who married U.S. soldiers stationed in Japan and moved to Puget Sound military bases, Magden said. Also, many workers for Japanese companies moved here and conducted trade from this side of the Pacific Ocean, he said.

The population decreased again statewide in the 1960s because of an economic downturn in the United States, which generally slows immigration, Magden said. In Pierce County, however, the population grew slightly at that time as the modern port industry was born and created jobs.

Another thing happened across the ocean during the 1970s. Japan had become the world's second-largest economic power, and people there no longer had to come to America to have better lives.

"It's not like you starve if you live in Japan," said Takeshi Tamazukuri, 45, owner of Sushi Tama restaurant in Tacoma. Twenty years ago, Tamazukuri came to the United States as a contracted chef for a Japanese restaurant. He was supposed to stay for three years, but he came to like living in this country. He stayed.

"These days, Japanese people move here for different reasons from the reason older Japanese immigrants had," he said.

As the Puget Sound population grew between the 1980s and 1990s, many Japanese farmers -- who made up a large segment of the farming community -- sold their land for development and left the area.

Also, in the 1990s, the third-generation immigrants and children of new immigrants became more mobile. Many of them left, looking for jobs or higher education elsewhere. And those left behind are aging.

The changing demographics accompany a change in the traditional culture as well.

Many members of the Japanese American Citizens League are from multiracial families.

Scholars say spouses in an interracial marriage tend to maintain less distinct Japanese culture in the household, and such a couple's children may not identify themselves as Japanese.

Nobody is sure how fast Japanese-Americans are being integrated into other racial groups. Magden estimates about two-thirds of Japanese-Americans in the area are married to people of other races.

Tetsuden Kashima, associate professor in the American Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Washington, said such a rate could be as high as 70 percent.

Pre-war community

A Japanese-language newspaper prospered in Tacoma before World War II.

So did a Japanese school. New Year's celebrations were flamboyant, as was Bon-odori, a Buddhist celebration in the summer. Tacoma had two semiprofessional Japanese baseball teams before the war, and Seattle had four.

They all are gone.

A Japanese-American church -- Whitney Memorial United Methodist Church, two blocks from the Buddhist temple on Fawcett Avenue -- closed in 1999 because of declining membership. It served Japanese-Americans for more than 90 years.

Ted Tamaki, 75, who grew up near the Buddhist temple, still drives from his home in Renton to visit the temple on Sundays.

"You'll never see the closeness in a large number of Japanese-Americans like before the war," he said.

Everything is changing: the culture, the demographics, the community.

And he welcomes that.

"What we are striving (for) is to open the door for the whole community."

-- John Tateishi, Japanese American Citizens League

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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