During the late nineteenth century, Tacoma was home to one of the largest Chinese-American communities in the Pacific Northwest. Amidst a broader wave of anti-Chinese sentiment, Tacoma city leaders and residents forcefully expelled the city’s Chinese-American population on November 3, 1885 in an event remembered as the “Tacoma Method.” Significant numbers of Chinese Americans would not return to Tacoma until after World War II, with the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The interviews in this section catalog the ways in which community organizers and artists have attempted to memorialize the city’s original Chinese-American community. While many of the interviews involve people affiliated with Chinese Reconciliation Park—the most public site of remembrance for the city’s historic Chinese-American community—the section also contains interviews with artists (Chevi Chung, Zhang Er, Greg Youtz) who have attempted to remember this community in creative works.

Photo: Maddy Hadden