Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Materiality of Anti-Japanese Racism: “Foreignness” and Racialization at Barneston, Washington (1898-1924)

  • Published:
International Journal of Historical Archaeology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Archaeologies of Japanese American labor reveal how company towns served as vehicles for racialization. Labor hierarchies at sawmill towns in Pacific Northwestern United States reified Nikkei immigrants as “foreign,” incapable of being full members of American society. Contests over “foreignness” are materialized on the landscape of Barneston, Washington. Community responses to anti-Japanese racism are visible through signage, while sawmill town owner strategies are reflected in the Nikkei’s spatial segregation. These arguments demonstrate how historical archaeology can link research in Asian American studies, racism and racialization, and company town labor to develop new syntheses of labor history.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Allen, J. (1966). The Company Town in the American West. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alvord, J. W. (1906). Report to the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul railway company of washington, upon the sanitary situation created by the proposed construction, maintenance, and operation of its line through a portion of the collecting grounds of the public water supply of Seattle, Washington. Journal of the New England Water Works Association XX:442–57.

  • Anonymous. (1904a). Board of health will investigate at Barneston – inquiry into alleged pollution of cedar river can be made under state law giving cities power to preserve the purity of their water supply. The Seattle Star, September 1:1, 5. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093407/issues/>. Accessed 3 Mar 2019.

  • Anonymous. (1904b). City’s scheme for cleansing Barnes[t]on – health board adds to suggestions made by President Loughary – free use of disinfectants made compulsory. The Seattle Star, September 20:1. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093407/issues/>. Accessed 3 Mar 2019.

  • Anonymous. (1904c). City has full power to protect water supply – vested in the municipatlity by state law – septic tanks at Barnes[t]on would probably serve as temporary protection – condemnation of townsite will ultimately be necessary – danger is by no means exaggerated. The Seattle Star, August 30:1, 7. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093407/issues/>. Accessed 3 Mar 2019.

  • Anonymous. (1904d). Japanese village will be removed – Cedar River water supply to be protected by doing away with this nuisance at Barneston. The Seattle Star, September 30:3. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093407/issues/>. Accessed 3 Mar 2019.

  • Anonymous. (1904e). Map of Barneston and surroundings to Cedar River. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 19:1. Microfilm. Suzallo-Allen Government Documents Library, University of Washington, Seattle.

  • Anonymous. (1904f). Radical reforms must be made at Barnes[t]on – investigation by president loughary, of the board of health, reveals revolting sanitary conditions – summary action taken on his recommendations to obviate danger which in rainy season would becoming alarming. The Seattle Star, September 19:3. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093407/issues/>. Accessed 3 Mar 2019.

  • Anonymous. (1904g). Sewage from entire village is now emptying into cedar river: revolting condition of affairs reported to exist at Barnes[t]on, a sawmill town upstream from headworks of city water system—Engineer Thompson is awake to the danger, but his hands are tied. The Seattle Star, August 26:1. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093407/issues/>. Accessed 3 Mar 2019.

  • Anonymous. (1904h). The Barneston Menace. The Seattle Star, September 19:4. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093407/issues/>. Accessed 3 Mar 2019.

  • Anonymous. (1909). Barneston, Washington. The Coast 17(6):44.

  • Asato, N. (2003). Ousting Japanese language schools: Americanization and cultural maintenance in Washington State, 1919-1927. Pacific Northwest Quarterly 94(3):140–50.

  • Asato, N. (2006). Teaching Mikadoism: The Attack on Japanese Language Schools in Hawaii, California, and Washington, 1919–1927. University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu.

  • Azuma, E. (2005). Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Azuma, E. (2009). Race, citizenship, and the “Science of Chick Sexing”: the politics of racial identity among Japanese Americans. Pacific Historical Review 78(2):242–75.

  • Beda, S. C. (2014). Landscapes of Solidarity: Timber Workers and the Making of Place in the Pacific Northwest, 1900–1964. Doctoral dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle.

  • Bonilla-Silva, E. (1997). Rethinking racism: toward a structural interpretation. American Sociological Review 62(3):465–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonilla-Silva, E. (2001). White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Lynne Rienner, Boulder.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bonilla-Silva, E. (2014). Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, 4th ed. Rowman and Littlefield, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borges, M. J. and Torres, S. B. (2012). Company towns: concepts, historiography, and approaches. In Borges, M. J. and Torres, S. B. (eds.), Company Towns: Labor, Space, and Power Relations across Time and Contintents, Palgrave MacMillan, New York, pp. 1–40.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Bowden, B. and Larson, L. L. (1997). Cultural Resource Assessment Japanese Camp and Laventer Town, Selleck, King County, Washington. Lars Anthropological/Archaeological Services, Seattle.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brattain, M. (2001). Politics of Whiteness: Race, Workers, and Culture in the Modern South. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, C. and Schroeder, J. (1996). Barneston, Washington: An Investigation of Place and Community through Photographs, Maps and Oral Histories. Cedar River Watershed Education Center, North Bend, WA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Camp, S. L. (2009). Materializing Inequality: The Archaeology of Citizenship and Race in Early 20th Century Los Angeles. Doctoral dissertation, Standford University, Stanford.

  • Camp, S. L. (2013). The Archaeology of Citizenship. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, R. J. (2017). Connections and Distinctions: Historical Archaeological Analysis of Japanese Ceramics Recovered from Three Issei Communities in the American West, 1903–1942. Master’s thesis, University of Idaho, Moscow.

  • Carlson, D. R. (2017). The Issei at Barneston Project: an investigation into issues of race and labor at an early twentieth-century Japanese-American sawmill community. Archaeology in Washington 17(Summer):30–61.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, D. R. (2018). Memorandum: Issei at Barneston Project 2017 Fieldwork Update. Cedar River Watershed Education Center, North Bend, WA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, D. R. (2019). Japanese Camp at Barneston Townsite. Site Inventory Form. Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, Olympia, WA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, L. (2003). Company Towns in the Pacific Northwest. University of Washington Press, Seattle.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crawford, M. (1995). Building the Workman’s Paradise: The Design of American Company Towns. Verso, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daniels, R. (1998). Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850. University of Washington Press, Seattle.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desmond, M. and Emirbayar, M. (2009). What is racial domination? Du Bois Review 6(2):335–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dinius, O. J. and Vergara, A. (2011). Company towns in the Americas: an introduction. In Dinius, O. J. and Vergara, A. (eds.), Company Towns in the Americas: Landscape, Power, and Working-Class Communities, University of Georgia Press, Athens, pp. 1–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dubrow, G. (2005). “The nail that sticks up gets hit”: the architecture of Japanese American identity in the urban environment, 1885-1942. In Fiset, L. and Nomura, G. M. (eds.), Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century, University of Washington Press, Seattle, pp. 120–45.

  • Dubrow, G., Graves, D., and Cheng, K. (2002). Sento at Sixth and Main: Preserving Landmarks of Japanese American Heritage. University of Washington Press, Seattle.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ficken, R. E. (1987). The Forested Land: A History of Lumbering in Western Washington. University of Washington Press, Seattle.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fields, K. E. and Fields, B. J. (2014). Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. Verso, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fong, K. N. (2013). Excavating Chinese America in the Delta: Race and the Historical Archaeoldogy of the Isleton Chinese American Community. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.

  • Frank, D. (1994). Race relations and the Seattle labor movement, 1915–1929. The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 86(1):35–44.

  • Freeman, J. R. (1906). Report to the state board of health of Washington upon the sanitary aspects of a grant of right-of-way by the City of Seattle for a railroad alongside the stream from which that city derives its public water supply. Journal of the New England Water Works Association XX:464–86.

  • Garner, J. (1984). The Model Company Town: Urban Design through Private Enterprise in Nineteenth-Century New England. University of Massechusetts Press, Amherst.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geiger, A. (2011). Subverting Exclusion: Transpacific Encounters with Race, Caste, and Borders, 1885-1928. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

  • Getz, L. M. (1987). Cedar River Watershed Cultural Resource Study. Cedar River Watershed Education Center, North Bend, WA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society. Polity Press, Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert, R. and Woodman, M. (1995). Barneston’s Japanese Community. Cedar River Watershed Education Center, North Bend, WA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillespie, W. B. and Farrell, M. M. (2002). Work camp settlement patterns: landscape-scale comparisons of two mining camps in southeastern Arizona. Historical Archaeology 36(3):59–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hardesty, D. L. (1994). Class, gender strategies, and material culture in the mining west. In Scott, E. M. (ed.), Those of Little Note, University of Arizona Press, Tuscon, pp. 129–145.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hardesty, D. L. (1998). Power and the industrial mining community in the American west. In Knapp, A. B., Pigott, V. C., and Herbert, E. W. (eds.), Social Approaches to the Industrial Past: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Mining, Routledge, London, pp. 81–96.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoover Institution Archives. 1924/1927. Survey on Race Relations Records. <https://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/56290>. Accessed 23 March, 2015.

  • Ichioka, Y. (1988). The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885–1924. Free Press, New York.

  • Ito, K. (1973). Issei: A History of Japanese Immigrants in North America. Executive Committe for Publication of Issei, a History of Japanese Immigrants in North America, Seattle.

  • Jacobson, M. (2009). Landscapes of hope and fear: a study of space in the Ludlow striker’s colony. In Larkin, K. and McGuire, R. H. (eds.), The Archaeology of Class War: The Colorado Coal Field Strike of 1913–1914, University Press of Colorado, Boulder, pp. 187–218.

  • Kim, C. J. (1999). The racial triangulation of Asian Americans. Politics and Society 27(12):105–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klingle, M. (2007). Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kobayashi, A. and Jackson, P. (1994). Japanese Canadians and the racialization of labour in the British Columbia sawmill industry. British Columbia Studies 103:33–58.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kurokawa, K. (2007). The Labor Movement and Japanese Immigrants in Seattle. Okayama University Education Press, Okayama.

    Google Scholar 

  • Larkin, K. and McGuire, R. H., (eds.) (2009). The Archaeology of Class War: The Colorado Coal Field Strike of 1913-1914. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.

  • Lau, C. Y. (2013). “Loving Luxury: The Cultural Economy of the Japanese American Home, 1920s.” Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.

  • Lau, C. Y. (2017). Ashamed of certain Japanese: the politics of affect in Japanese women's immigration exclusion, 1919-1924. In Choy, C. C. and Wu, J. (eds.), Gendering the Trans-Pacific World: Diaspora, Empire, and Race, Brill, Boston, pp. 196-220.

  • Liu, J. (1984). Race, ethnicity, and the sugar plantation system: Asian labor in Hawaii, 1850–1900. In Cheng, L. and Bonacich, E. (eds.), Labor Migration under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States before World War II, University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 186–210.

  • Loomis, E. (2008). The Battle for the Body: Work and Environment in the Pacific Northwest Lumber Industry, 1800-1940. Doctoral dissertation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

  • Matthews, C. N. (2010). The Archaeology of American Capitalism. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mrozowski, S. A. (2006). The Archaeology of Class in Urban America. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mrozowski, S. A., Ziesing, G. H., and Beaudry, M. C. (1996). Living on the Boott: Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses, Lowell, Massachusetts. University of Massechusetts Press, Amherst.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ngai, M. (2004). Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nomura, G. M. (2005). Becoming “local” Japanese: Issei adaptive strategies on the Yakima Indian reservation, 1906-1923. In Fiset, L. and Nomura, G. M. (eds.), Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century, University of Washington Press, Seattle, pp. 44–70.

  • Oharazeki, K. (2016). Japanese Prostitutes in the Pacific Northwest, 1887–1920. University of Washington Press, Seattle.

  • Olson, R. (1924a). General information regarding Pacific National Lumber Co., National, Washington. Survey of Race Relations, Box 28, No. 205, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924c). General notes on the Eatonville Lumber Company. Survey of Race Relations, Box 28, No. 204, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924d). General information regarding Walville Lumber Company, Walville, Washington. Survey of Race Relations, Box 28, No. 202, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924e). Interview with A.R. Johnson, mill superintendent, Ernest Dolge Lumber Company. Survey of Race Relations, Box 27, No. 200, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924f). Interview with Jasper Howe, carpenter, Rucker Brothers Lumber Company. Survey of Race Relations, Box 27, No. 199, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924g). Interview with Jimmy Harwell, belt maker, Crown Lumber Company. Survey of Race Relations, Box 28, No. 203, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924h). Interview with Mr. Galbraith, Jr., mill superintendent, Eatonville Lumber Company. Survey of Race Relations, Box 28, No. 204, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924i). Interview with Mr. Hoff, superintendent, Pacific National Lumber Company. Survey of Race Relations, Box 28, No. 205, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924j). Interview with Mr. Kubayashi and Mr. Ohye, Crown Lumber Co. Survey of Race Relations, Box 28, No. 203, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924k). Interview with Mr. Ninemire, president, N&M Lumber Company. Survey of Race Relations, Box 28, No. 210, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924l). Interview with Mr. Stout, manager, Carlisle Pennel Lumber Company. Survey of Race Relations, Box 28, No. 207, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924m). Interview with R. Ode, foreman, Eatonville Lumber Company. Survey of Race Relations, Box 28, No. 204, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924n). Interview with Reverend Gardner, reverend (Methodist church), Eatonville Lumber Company. Survey of Race Relations, Box 28, No. 204, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1924o). Interview with unknown editor of Eatonville Dispatch, Eatonville Lumber Company. Survey of Race Relations, Box 28, No. 204, Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Acccessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Olson, R. (1927). The Orientals in the Lumber Industry in the State of Washington. Unpublished report, Suzallo-Allen Library Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle.

    Google Scholar 

  • Omi, M. and Winant, H. (2015). Racial Formation in the United States. 3rd ed. Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Orser, C. E. Jr. (2007). The Archaeology of Race and Racialization in Historic America. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

    Google Scholar 

  • Preucel, R. W. (2006). Archaeological Semiotics. Blackwell, Malden, MA.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • R. H. G. (1924). Interview with Commissioner Weedin, Immigration Station, Seattle. Survey on Race Relations, Box 27, No. 160. Hoover Institution Archives. <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2q2n98s9/?query=survey+race+relations>. Accessed 23 Mar 2015.

  • Roediger, D. R. (2007). The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, Revised Edition. Verso, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ross, D. E. (2011). Factors influencing the dining habits of Japanese and Chinese migrants at a British Columbia salmon cannery. Historical Archaeology 45(2):68–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saito, N. T. (1997). Model minority, yellow peril: functions of foreignness in the construction of Asian American legal identity. Asian American Law Journal 4(6):71–95.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sedgwick, W. T. (1906). On the protection of public water supplies from pollution during the construction, maintenance, and operation of railroads, with special reference to the water supply of Seattle, Washington; together with criticisms of the present methods of water supply. Journal of the New England Water Works Association 20:427–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shackel, P. and Larson, D. (2000). Labor, racism, and the built environment in early industrial Harper’s Ferry. In Delle, J. A., Mrozowski, S. A., and Paynter, R. (eds.), Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, pp. 22–39.

  • Spickard, P. (2007). Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity. Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Takaki, R. (1983). Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, R. H. (1903). Barneston: land proposed to be acquired by the City of Seattle, Section 13 & 24, T22N R7E, scale 1” = 200”. Unpublished Map, CRHM 29, December 1903, Cedar River Watershed Education Center, North Bend, WA.

  • Thompson, R. H. (1911). Buildings 4, 10, 11 & 12 - Jap town, Barneston. the baths. Unpublished photograph and notes, Item No. 48039, Seattle Municipal Archives. <http://archives.seattle.gov/digital-collections/index.php/Detail/objects/87569>. Accessed 11 May 2016.

  • van Buren, T. M. (2002). Struggling with class relations at a Los Angeles aqueduct construction camp. Historical Archaeology 36(3):28—43.White, W. A. (2017). Writ on the landscape: racialization, whiteness, and river street. Historical Archaeology 51(1):131–48.

  • White, W. A., Boswell, S. A., and Miss, C. J. (2008). Results of Data Recovery and Site Evaluation Excavations at the Japanese Gulch Site 45SN398 Mukilteo, Washington. Northwest Archaeological Associates, Seattle.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wood, M. (2002). Women’s work and class conflict in a working-class coal-mining community. In O’Donovan, M. (ed.), Dynamics of Power, Center for Archaeological Investigations, Carbondale, pp. 66–87.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wood, M. (2009). Building the corporate family: constructing homes, families, and the nation. In Larkin, K. and McGuire, R. H. (eds.), The Archaeology of Class War: The Colorado Coal Field Strike of 1913–1914. University Press of Colorado, Boulder, pp. 123–60.

  • Wu, E. D. (2015). The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Box 353100, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

    David R. Carlson

Authors
  1. David R. Carlson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David R. Carlson.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Carlson, D.R. The Materiality of Anti-Japanese Racism: “Foreignness” and Racialization at Barneston, Washington (1898-1924). Int J Histor Archaeol 25, 686–717 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-020-00563-7

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-020-00563-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation