How Big Was Japantown?

How Big Was Japantown?. . At its peak, nearly 14,000 people, many of them U.S. citizens, lived and worked from here on up the hill., This is the original edge of Japantown, a large and energetic community from the 1890s to 1942. The Japanese influence in Seattle expanded as the Chinese presence declined, limited by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The growing U.S. still needed labor and Japanese immigrants fit the bill., As time passed, these immigrants and their descendants established businesses, ran hotels, raised families, and helped build Seattle–until the forced removal of the entire population during World War II, from which the original community never fully recovered., For more about Japantown, visit the nearby Wing Luke Museum, Caption 1: The restored Furuya Building still stands across the corner on Main Street. Its founder settled in Seattle as a tailor then gradually expanded into retail and import-export, labor contracting, and eventually banking., Caption 2: During World War II, the U.S. Government forced 7,000 Japanese Americans from Seattle into concentration camps elsewhere. Their businesses and houses taken, few returned after the war. Those who came back re-established Japantown, which is now just a few blocks up Main Street., Caption 3: Parade float by the Japanese Fishing Tackle Dealers Association, 1930s.