A School Built for Children Became a Gateway for Their Removal.
May 21, 1912: The Tacoma Japanese Association opened Nihongo Gakkō, a Japanese language school for the community’s children.
The school was created to help children of Japanese immigrants hold onto language, culture, discipline, and identity.
It stood on the 1700 block of Tacoma Avenue, in the neighborhood above Commencement Bay, surrounded by the businesses and homes that made up Tacoma’s Japanese American community.
Hotels. Restaurants. Laundries. Banks. Family homes.
For more than 30 years, the school was one of the community’s anchors.
Students learned English, Japanese, and Japanese culture. Before World War II, it was one of 24 Japanese language schools operating in Washington.
Courtesy of the University of Washington, Special Collections
Tacoma Japanese Language School, in 1927. The original school opened in 1912 at 1700 Tacoma Avenue. In 1922, the community built this larger school next door.
Courtesy of the Tacoma Public Library Northwest Collection
The school taught Japanese language and culture while helping children of immigrant families carry themselves with dignity in a country that often treated them as outsiders.
Courtesy of University of Washington Libraries
Students and faculty outside the Tacoma Japanese Language School, 1937. The presence of Masato and Kinu Yamasaki shaped the school and the community.
Courtesy of the Tacoma Public Library Northwest Collection
The school taught language, culture, and dignity, encouraging children to become model Americans even as the country questioned whether they belonged.
Sensei Masato and Kinu Yamasaki
At the center of the school were Masato Yamasaki and his wife, Kinu.
The Yamasakis taught more than language.
They taught children how to carry themselves with dignity in a country that often treated them as outsiders.
They encouraged students to be ethical, respectful, and proud of who they were. They wanted them to represent their community well at a time when anti-Japanese discrimination was deeply embedded in American life.
Masato Yamasaki also insisted that the school remain independent. Unlike many Japanese language schools on the West Coast, Tacoma’s school was not tied to a Buddhist temple or Christian church. He wanted it to serve all Japanese American children.
World War II
Then Pearl Harbor was attacked.
After Executive Order 9066, the same building that had once welcomed children became a registration site for forced removal.
Families who had sent their children there to learn now entered the building to begin the process of losing their homes, businesses, farms, and freedom.
Most of those students would spend the war incarcerated.
Others would later serve in the U.S. military, including in intelligence work that depended on the same Japanese language skills once taught in schools like this.
After Pearl Harbor, suspicion became policy. Tacoma’s Japanese Language School would soon become a registration site for forced removal.
Young soldiers studying at the MIS Language School. The same Japanese language once taught at schools like Tacoma Nihongo Gakkō became a crucial intelligence skill.
Courtesy of Lordsburg-Hidalgo County Museum
Camp Lordsburg in New Mexico, where Masato Yamasaki died in 1943 after being arrested as a community leader. The teacher did not live to see his students return home.
After the war, the Tacoma Japanese Language School stood mostly abandoned. The community it had served for decades had been scattered, and many never returned.
What Was Lost
Masato Yamasaki, as a respected community leader, was among the first to be arrested after the war began.
He died in 1943 at the Lordsburg internment camp in New Mexico.
Kinu Yamasaki died in Tacoma in 1946.
After the war, much of Tacoma’s Japanese American community did not return. The school building stood mostly empty for decades.
In 1993, the University of Washington Tacoma purchased the property. By then, the wooden structure had badly deteriorated and was later declared a safety hazard.
The Memory
Before World War II, Washington had 24 Japanese language schools.
Only one survived.
The Seattle Japanese Language School remained standing and later became temporary housing for Japanese Americans returning after incarceration.
Tacoma’s school did not survive.
The building had been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated as a City of Tacoma Landmark. But in 2004, after standing vacant since the 1940s, it was demolished.
A decade later, on October 10, 2014, the University of Washington Tacoma unveiled the Japanese Language School Memorial, featuring “Maru,” a bronze sculpture by Northwest artist Gerard Tsutakawa.
Once home to over 300 students before the war, the Seattle Japanese Language School became a shelter for Japanese Americans returning from incarceration camps.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Interior of the Tacoma Japanese Language School in 1994. Even decades after the school closed, traces of the school’s Japanese language lessons remained on the wall.
Courtesy of Hoshihide Wanzer Architects + Interiors
“Maru” by Gerard Tsutakawa. The original school was demolished, but its memory remains in the place where generations of Japanese American children once learned.