An Immigrant History Of Pike Place Market

In the face of relentless adversity, Seattle’s Japanese farmers planted today’s culture at the Pike Place Market. If you lived in Seattle in the mid-1920s, odds were that the milk and raspberries you stirred into your oatmeal, as you listened to Calvin Coolidge on the radio, were planted, nurtured, and harvested by Japanese immigrants. At that time, Japanese farms produced three-quarters of King County’s produce and half of its milk. They accomplished this in the face of racism, which closed markets to them and limited their advantages. As early as the 1890s, Japanese truck farmers cultivated the soil in the White River and Puyallup valleys, farming Bellevue and Green Lake, and tilling plots on Vashon and Bainbridge islands. According to author and historian David Takami, more than 1,000 Japanese farmers cultivated 25,000 acres in Washington by 1930… read more and view the gallery >