Photographer and community activist Gordon Swetland, along with a small team of artists, historians and preservationists, would like to offer you an opportunity to experience a rapidly-disappearing piece of Tacoma’s landscape and history.

In its heyday, Tacoma’s Japantown — Nihonmachi to the people who lived there — had everything the City of Destiny currently aspires to: thriving families, active commerce and a rich culture. Today, the only local evidence of the once-vibrant community lies in a few old buildings, remnants of buildings, a set of steps to nowhere on Fawcett Avenue, and a hodge-podge of trinkets, photos and historical accounts. Those pieces are currently being gathered by Swetland and friends and made available to Tacomans who still care, and those who might care if they knew. 

“There is an influx of new residents that doesn’t know what Tacoma used to be,” says Swetland. “We’ve been trying to document what’s left, and what’s not.”

The effort to preserve evidence of Japantown’s existence can be followed at www.tacoma thenandnow.typepad.com where Swetland and crew will progressively post photos taken by Fairbanks-based college professor and photographer Stephen Cysewski, who shot rolls and rolls of Tacoma in 1979. Swetland and local contributors, meanwhile, have traced Cysewski’s steps, shooting the same frames, which will be posted together on the Tacoma Then and Now blog. Swetland has gone so far as to purchase an old camera and uses lenses identical to the ones his Alaskan, trans-time counterpart used.

“I haven’t shot film in a while,” he says. “We’re swapping Stephen [Cysewski] shot for shot.”

The images, research and conversation surrounding this project puts a spotlight on some beautiful components of Tacoma’s history. It also brings up some uncomfortable ones.

It is well known, for example, that in 1885 Tacoma leaders forcibly exiled Chinese laborers and their families from the community and burned their homes, which were clustered near Tacoma’s waterfront and along Opera Alley. They were forced out of the community during a time when cheap Chinese labor was blamed for economic hard times. Legions of Chinese residents were placed on trains to Portland and Olympia. Many walked.

As Swetland tells it, the arrival of railroads and a growing timber/agricultural economy revived the need for cheap labor, which opened the door to Japanese immigrants who arrived in force. Japantown was born. Many Tacomans remained bigoted toward anyone of Asian descent, which resulted in rampant segregation and discrimination. 

By the 1920s, Japanese residents had created a flourishing business community that served Tacoma, despite continuing bigotry. Business owners provided boarding, dining services, farm-fresh food, gambling and laundry services, for example, to residents and a stream of migrant timber and farm workers.

Then, when World War II was getting into full swing, Japanese residents were rounded up and sent to prison camps — justified by decision makers as a national security effort. A fisherman named Fujimatsu Moriguchi was among them. Before he was imprisoned, he sold fish cakes and other fresh food from the back of his truck to Japanese laborers. After he was freed, Moriguchi returned to the Pacific Northwest, but ended up in Seattle. Along with his family, Moriguchi opened a grocery store, Uwajimaya, which is now the largest Japanese supermarket in the region.

Of the 872 Japanese-Americans ejected from Tacoma, only 10 first-generation Japanese families and five single men returned to Tacoma, says amateur historian and Japantown project contributor Chad Schneider.

“It’s sad that there is a huge part of our history that doesn’t really exist any more,” he says. “There are still people left here who were part of this. There needs to be something to acknowledge what happened.”

For his part, Schneider has invested several days of his life researching what’s left of Japantown’s history. The results of his digging will be unearthed along with the photo sets, and add an extra dimension to the project, he says.

Most of Schneider’s research turned up evidence of a dense community that filled blocks between Pacific and Tacoma avenues, and from 11th to 17th streets.

Within those bounds, Swetland, Schneider and others have located 12 concrete remnants of buildings or homes, and a few standing homes once inhabited by Japanese families. On the 1300 block, the more-than-100-year-old home of Jack Sugimoto, with a stick-frame and a stacked rock entry, stands like an unknown soldier to be. 

Tacoma’s Nihonmachi is unmarked and officially unrecognized locally, says Swetland, except by a few small groups, residents and academics. He hopes that his efforts will encourage local leaders to pay homage to Tacoma’s Nihonmachi in a way that can’t or won’t be bulldozed.

“The first month the blog was up and running, we got 3,000 site visits,” says Swetland. “I hope it just keeps growing.”

Check out Swetland’s progress at www.tacomathenandnow.org.