Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century

1. Introduction: Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest

I I INTRODUCTION Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest LOUIS FISET AND GAIL M. NOMURA On June 28, 2003, the V.ancouver Asahi baseball team was inducted into the Canadian Baseball HallofFame. Asemi-professional team composed ofJapanese Canadians from Vancouverand the Fraser Valley, theAsahis became both a top draw for pre-WorldWar II whiteVancouver baseball fans and communityheroes for Japanese Canadians, beginning in 1926 with their first of many city league championships. Moreover, a string of five consecutive championships against Japanese American teamsbetween 1937 and 1941 was a factor leadingto their induction and continues to serve as a source of pride for surviving Asahi members. Early rivalries from 1928 to 1935 matched the Vancouver Asahis against the Seattle Nippons and the Seattle Taiyos. From 1936 to 1941 the Canadian team played the champion ofthe DoubleA Courier League, which consisted ofan amalgamation ofJapaneseAmerican teams from throughout the Puget Sound region. The 1939 Courier League champion was the Fife Nippons, who that year also won the prestigious Northwest Fourth of July Baseball Tournament. From its founding in 1931, this tournament attracted the best Pacific Northwest regional Japanese American teams, such asth~ Boise Valley Asahis, Portland Fujis, Wapato Nippons, and the Green Lake (Seattle) and White River teams. The tournament evolved into the largestsocial gathering of Japanese Americans in the Pacific Northwest. The sports-minded Seattle vernacular newspaper, Japanese American Courier, referred to the three-game, cross-border exchanges with the VancouverAsahis asthe "international series.» TheAsahis and Vancouver newspapers , on the other hand, named the same series the Pacific Northwest Championship.1 Thus, the Nikkei, that is, the people of Japanese descent 4 LOUIS FISET AND GAIL M. NOMURA on bothsidesofthe international boundary, found their own means to define the region. Scholars havelongdebatedtheborders that define a region.which expand or contract depending upon political, physiographic, or cultural simi1ari~ ties that seem to draw an area into a single focus.2 The states of Washington , Oregon, and Idaho, for example, represent the most commonly accepted political borders of the Pacific Northwest, with their northern extension stopping abruptly at the 49th parallel. Other definitions include Alaska, Montana, and sometimes Wyoming. Physiographicborders tend to de~emphasize the 49th Parallel, "an imag~ inary line," writes Canadian historian Jeremy Mouat, "born of Euclidian geometry and geopolitics."3 The vast Columbia River watershed is perhaps the most well known ofthe physiographic definitions of the Pacific Northwest , one that expands the Pacific Northwest into British Columbia and beyond Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.4 Regions defined by cultural characteristics take on yet other boundaries. The wetter and greener geography west of the Cascade range, sometimes called Cascadia, and the drier and browner places to the east coincide with two distinct anthropological "culture areas," defined as the Northwest Coast and the Columbia Plateau. The Indian peoples north and south of the 49th parallel on the moist side of the mountains, such as the Kwakiutl ofthe northern coast and the Makah ofthe Olympic Peninsula, shared more cultural characteristics with each other than theydid with tribes on the drier lands to the east. For Nikkei, like the Indians of the Pacific Northwest, the political border dividing the United States from British Columbia did not initially pose an obstacle. The largely unguarded border between Canada and the United States made crossings relatively easy.5 Victoria and Vancouver were often used as entry points to the United States. In the minds of Japanese immigrants , the Issei, America often blended the North American countries of Canada and the United States. Nikkei crossed the border for baseball games, work, trade, shopping, meetings, vacations, and socialevents. Many social, cultural, political, and economic ties and connections developed between and among the Nikkei communities in the cross-border Pacific Northwest. Yet, national identities were distinct and dear. The essays in this anthology begin to explore this regional history, and through them one can begin to make fruitful comparisonsand distinctions in the histories of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians. However, to understand this regional historyfully, readers should beaware ofthe his- NIKKEI IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST 5 torical context of the Japanese American and Japanese Canadian experience in the twentieth century. In 1900,5,617 Japanese resided in Washington State and 2,501 in Oregon, consisting of approximately 44 percent of all Nikkei living along the U.S. Pacific Coast at the time. An additional 4>597 resided in British Columbia, representing virtually all Japanese in the dominion. After 1890 most Issei...