How My Research Led Me to Seattle's Hidden Treasure: The Panama Hotel 

    Do you remember where you were the first time you learned about the Japanese Internment/Concentration Camps in the U.S. following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941? I was a ten-year-old fourth grader studying Idaho History. My teacher, Mrs. Davis, nonchalantly mentioned it in passing, and nary a word was said about it afterward. It was a doubly egregious act since Idaho’s governor had petitioned to have one of these camps built two hours from where we lived, and I didn’t know about it until graduate school.

During my master’s program, the topic finally resurfaced. Another student and I decided to research this Idaho camp (Minidoka) for our culminating project. Personally, it was a decision that marked a watershed moment in my life and career. We combed through the archives studying internal camp reports, governmental documents relating to forced incarceration, maps, and photos of the camps and the prisoners held within. Still, there weren’t any documents in the collection of files that referenced how it felt to be an inmate. Consequently, I made it my personal mission to find at least one living survivor who could tell us the other side of the story.

A perfunctory Google search led me to the professor. A kind man who spent three years incarcerated within the barbed wires and under the looming presence of armed guards in guard towers brandishing guns. He gave of his time generously and freely to educate us as to what it was like to be held unlawfully in one of these “internment” camps and to explain the cascading cross-generational ramifications that affected Japanese Americans even after they had been released. The professor repeatedly recommended we visit a landmark hotel (former boarding house) in Seattle that played a pivotal role in the story of Japanese internment to really understand a sliver of what their community experienced during the 3-day round-up of Japanese Americans due to Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066.

                          Panama Hotel (Photo credit: Joe Mabel)

 Amidst the chaos of readying oneself to be transported to who knows where and who knows for how long, imagine having to find a place to store your furniture and more valuable items for an unforeseeable future. The only logical place was the Panama Hotel. According to the business’ website, the hotel opened on the corner of 6^th and South Main Street in Nihonmachi (Japantown), Seattle, in 1910. The Hori family took proprietorship of the business in 1938. Initially, the hotel served as a boarding house for the working men traveling from Japan to Seattle to find access to jobs, and that didn’t have any other place to live after they arrived. In addition to rooms where one could lay their heads at night, the Panama Hotel boasted a “sento,” or Japanese bathhouse, an important place to gather together as a community, bathe, and relax after a hard day of manual labor.

Photo credit: Author

  The Hori family was highly respected in Japantown, so storing precious belongings in the hotel’s basement seemed logical. Hori graciously let anyone store anything that needed to be saved for later. In the frenzy to prepare to leave, the hotel basement was filled with traveling trunks, several pianos, sets of encyclopedias, fur coats, and many other valuables and belongings. Unfortunately, many of these items were never returned to their rightful owners following the camps' dissolution, so they still sit precisely where they were left in February 1942.

 

Flooring Panel that Allows Visitors to See What’s Left Behind

(Photo credit: Joe Mabel)

When you enter the Panama Hotel Tea & Coffee today, the flooring has transparent floorboards, allowing you to see the items that remain after all these years and the thick coat of dust that sits atop them all. These clear floor panels, which allow visitors to peek into the secrets the basement holds, serve as both a shrine and memorial to the Japanese Americans unlawfully incarcerated during World War II. Unfortunately, the hotel’s current proprietor doesn’t let researchers or sightseers into the basement to view the entire collection because the items were being mishandled, touched excessively, and disrespected by visitors. As a researcher who had high hopes of visiting the complete collection, this was heartbreaking.

Photo credit: Author

One perk of visiting is that the current proprietor does allow visitors to see the sento in the basement. According to the hotel’s website, the sento itself was closed in 1963 due to the increasing water prices and the availability of bathtubs in most American households. Still, the tour was definitely worth taking for a small fee. The tiling is beautiful, you get to see each bath (separated by gender), and even can see the place where you would pick up your towel on the way in

 

Photo credit: Author

 

Today, the hotel is still open for business. The owner has spent considerable time trying to restore the rooms to their pre-World War II glory. Each room has a particular décor theme that hails back to times long passed but not forgotten. A true hidden treasure in Japantown, Seattle.