Seattle: 1900-1920 -From Boomtown, Through Urban Turbulence ...

40 Part Onecharacterizes this time frame as the“settling in period”—a period thattended toward “ghettoization.”Small shops typified Japanesebusiness operations, though therewere enough hotels to justifythe formation of a JapaneseHotel Owners’ Association and asufficient number of businesses toestablish the Japanese Chamberof Commerce. A few of theirnumber were admitted to theSeattle Chamber of Commerce,most notably the millionaireMasajiro Furuya, to whom theA postcard for the Pekin Café promises the “Best Chinese-American Restaurant in the West . . .”Town Crier paid special tribute in July 1914. Miyamoto observed a tendency toward social“solidarity” among the Japanese who settled in the city. They were “joiners,” but not onlyin business organizations as noted above; they also formed their own labor unions. Eventhough the AFL did not accept them, Japanese unions refrained from strikebreaking whenother Asians were being recruited as scabs during the climactic 1916 longshoremen’s strike.During the 1919 General Strike, Japanese unions were admitted as nonvoting members ofthe Central Labor Council of Seattle. During this period many immigrants began farmingthe outlying land south of the city and the Duwamish, Green, and White River valleys,often establishing marketing cooperatives that catered to local consumers and ultimately tomarkets in the midwestern and northeastern United States.Most Japanese and Chinese youngsters were schooled at Main Street School until1921 when Bailey Gatzert School opened on Twelfth Avenue, a mere two blocks south ofJackson Street. Some Japanese parents chose to send their children to schools that werecloser to where they lived, such as Central School at Seventh Avenue and Madison Streetand Pacific School on Twelfth Avenue just south of Cherry Street. Not until the 1930s didJapanese and Chinese teens start entering nearby high schools in large numbers, for the firsttime merging significantly with the white majority. This acculturation of the Japanese wasabruptly halted when they were evacuated to internment camps in early 1942.Other ethnic groups, including Jews, African Americans, and Italians, also tendedto cluster together in one neighborhood. Like theJapanese, Jews played a much larger role in thecommunity than their modest numbers wouldindicate. However, being white, they were ableto merge with the majority population. GermanJews arrived the earliest, well before the turn ofthe century. Jacob Furth migrated from Bohemia,sojourning in Colusa, California, before enteringthe banking business in Seattle and then rising tothe presidency of the Seattle Electric Company