Japanese immigrants to Washington were influential in railway construction, and other industries including forestry. Workers of Japanese ancestry made up the largest ethnic group of workers at the Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company, outnumbering even Scandinavian immigrants.
Japanese immigrants settled in several regions of the country, but the Northwest was a particularly popular destination. This new exhibit acknowledges the role of Japanese immigrants and their children in the construction of railroads, but also in the success the Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company.
In the Snoqualmie Valley, the earliest known Japanese connection was through the construction of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway. The Chinese exclusion act combined with Japan’s emergence from isolationism to position Japanese immigrants as the predominant group recruited for railroad construction and maintenance in this region. Usually, a contractor provided a Japanese worker to a railroad, and that worker was then required to pay a fee to said contractor, often as much as 10 cents a day.
Persons of Japanese ancestry were part of the fabric of Snoqualmie Falls, but it was an imperfect tapestry: persons of Japanese ancestry lived in a separate bunkhouse or a different part of the community than those of European ancestry. However, they did attend the same schools.
The Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company – and the Snoqualmie Valley – was devastated by the 1942 incarceration of persons of Japanese ancestry. Overnight, this Weyerhaeuser Timber enterprise lost a significant portion of its work force, and these people – many of whom were either born American citizens or had been living in the United States for decades (Asian immigrants had no path to citizenship) – were interned in camps only because of their ethnic origins.
Japanese Railroaders was funded in part by 4Culture and the Quest For Truth Foundation. It is a permanent exhibit at the Northwest Railway Museum and is open now in the Train Shed, 9320 Stone Quarry Road, Snoqualmie, WA, Thursday – Sunday, 11 am – 5 pm.
