Claiming the Oriental Gateway: Prewar Seattle and Japanese America

In Claimining the Oriental Gateway, Shelley Sang-Hee Lee explores the various intersections of urbanization, ethnic identity, and internationalism in the experience of Japanese Americans in early-twentieth-century Seattle. She examines the development and self-image of the city by documenting how U.S. expansion, Asian trans-Pacific migration, and internationalism were manifested locally---and how these forces affected residents' relationships with one another and with their surroundings.

Lee details the significant role that Japanese Americans---both immigrants and U.S.-born citizens---played in the social and civic life of the city as a means of "becoming American." Seattle embraced the idea of cosmopolitanism and boosted its role as a cultural and commercial "gateway to the Orient" as it also limited the ways in which Asian Americans could participate in the public schools, local art production, civic celebrations, and sports. Lee also looks at how Japan encouraged the notion of the "gateway" in its participation in the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and the International Potlatch.

Claiming the Oriental Gateway is an illuminating study of the "Pacific Era" and trans-Pacific relations in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Shelley Sang-Hee Lee is Assistant Professor of Comparative American Studies and History at Oberlin College.