Lakewood Site Has A Dark Mark In Local History

While Tacoma has a Reconciliation Park to, at least partly, make amends for its past, Lakewood's role in an event that shocked the nation has largely gone unnoticed.

The date was Nov. 5, 1885, and Tacoma laborers and politicians gathered with torches and weapons well in hand to forcibly removed hundreds of Chinese immigrants from the city. They had largely settled in the city after building the transcontinental railroad that ended in Tacoma. That back-breaking work done, they were seen as a threat to the local labor pool and “moral character” of the citizenry.

The forced expulsion of the Chinese from Tacoma has gone down in history as the “Tacoma Method” and gained national notoriety when news of the armed mob torching the city’s “Little Canton” and “escorting” its former residents to a train station in what is now Lakewood for a one-way trip to Portland.

It was the actions of that night that explain why Tacoma is the only major city of the West Coast without a Chinatown.

Unlike a sudden riot that leads to horrible acts of violence, this expulsion came after months of planning by the “who’s who” of local business, labor and government of the day. Posters hung around the area advancing the event. The mayor even led the march from downtown to the Chinese section of town.

More than 600 Chinese were forced from their huts and shacks around midnight. Everything they owned was either stuffed into bags for a quick escape or burned by rioters before dawn came the following day. Some of the Chinese, most accounts but the number at about 200, were taken to a train station at Seventh and Pacific Avenue, while others were forced to walk some six miles south to another station in Lakewood’s Lakeview neighborhood.

The rain that night was hard and cold. Several died from exposure before the morning train came.

Those Chinese who could not pay for their train tickets were stuffed into box cars at the end of the train. Once those cars filled, the remaining Chinese were forced to simply walk south behind the train.

Territorial Gov. Watson Squire declared martial law immediately after the riot and militia soldiers were told to keep other cities like Seattle and Bellingham from following Tacoma’s example.

More than a dozen men were arrested and indicted for conspiracy to deprive the Chinese of their civil rights. A handful of the rioters received only light sentences and not on them were prominent business or elected officials.

The Lakeview Station remained in operation well into the late 1930s when it was finally razed to the ground. The site is at the corner of Steilacoom Boulevard and Lakeview Avenue. In an ironic twist, the area is now known as part of the International District, home to South Korean, Japanese and Chinese businesses.