Nidoto Nai Yoni

Since it was almost 90 miles to the state capital, we checked out of Lake Quinault Lodge and were on our way well before 8:00AM this morning. It was quite foggy, so we decided to stick to US-101 through Aberdeen instead of the small, winding roads that the navigation apps were trying to kill us on. As we drove, R looked up online reviews of breakfast places along the way - Phoebe's Pastry Café in Olympia got our business because it was open (some places weren't) and pretty close to the capitol. I had a yummy breakfast burrito, and R's bacon and tomato quiche was quite good, too (no pics, sorry!)

It was pretty deserted around the capitol, so finding a parking spot was no problem. The Washington Supreme Court is convened in the Temple of Justice, which is located directly across from the Legislative Building.

Anyone else read that phrase in Ted Knight's voice from the Super Friends cartoon?

Just inside the entrance was the visitor information desk and the Washington state capital stamp. Yay!

We opted to go around the building on our own instead of with a docent. There was a lot of homage paid to George, as is to be expected for the eponym of the state. I thought that the room with the displays about the history of Washington State was really interesting, too.

Looking up at the dome

State seal

From the capitol, it was a straight shot onto I-5 north. Then in Tacoma we exited onto WA-16 west, crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I remember watching footage of the original bridge collapsing in my high school physics class, so I thought it was pretty cool to be driving across its replacement.

WA-16 turned into WA-3 near Port Orchard/Bremerton, so we continued north to Poulsbo, at which point we headed south on WA-305 onto Bainbridge Island. Our next stop was the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial. 

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, which granted authority to the War Department to create zones from which people of Japanese ancestry (Nikkei) could be excluded. The first exclusion area to be designated was Bainbridge Island. On March 30, 1942, with just six days' notice, 227 Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the island were forcibly collected at the Eagledale Ferry Dock with only the things that they could carry or wear. They were sent to the incarceration camp in Manzanar, California first and were later transferred to the camp in Minidoka, Idaho for the remainder of the war.

This sub-unit of the Minidoka National Historic Site is an outdoor exhibit commemorating the incarceration of those Nikkei from Bainbridge Island. Located near the historic ferry dock, the memorial wall is 276 feet long and bears the names of all 276 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were exiled from the island. 

Nidoto Nai Yoni - Let It Not Happen Again

"I felt like a second-class citizen, to be herded onto the boat by soldiers
with bayonets. It was... the most humiliating experience of my life."
- Isami Nakao

"Back home at graduation they had thirteen empty chairs on the stage.
That day I felt so empty and sad. I sat on my bunk and cried."
- Nobuko Sakai Omoto

Each person was tagged before being sent away, which is
symbolically used in the art installation here

Origami cranes signify hope and healing

To be honest, it was hard for me not to be overcome with emotion as we walked the grounds of the memorial. The injustice of what happened to the Bainbridge Island Japanese and the ~120,000 others like them who were forcibly removed from their homes and incarcerated during World War II upsets me. So many people like R's mom's family lost everything - their businesses, their property, their savings, their FREEDOM - simply because of their ancestry. That the anti-Asian racism which fomented those actions 80 years ago is *still* evident to this day just makes me feel angry, disappointed, and sad all at the same time. 

Nidoto Nai Yoni.

Let it not happen again.

Afterwards, we went to the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum. (Yes, there is a passport stamp here!) I especially appreciated learning about Walt and Milly Woodward, publishers of the local Bainbridge Review. The day after Pearl Harbor, the Woodwards warned, "There is the danger of a blind, wild hysterical hatred of all persons who can trace ancestry to Japan. That some of those persons happen to be American citizens...easily could be swept aside by mob hysteria." The Woodwards continued throughout the war to speak against the constitutional violations inherent in Executive Order 9066. They also hired high school students as camp correspondents, reporting from Manzanar and Minidoka on the daily events in the exiles' lives. Perhaps maintaining relationships with their neighbors in this way contributed to more than half of the exiled Islanders returning to Bainbridge, a greater percentage than most communities.

Once we finished looking around the museum, we headed down the street to the ferry terminal. We just missed the boarding for the 2:05PM sailing, so we were first in line for the next one at 2:55PM. It took about 35 minutes to cross over to Seattle.

After disembarking the ferry, we drove straight over to the Seattle unit of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park since the visitor center and museum were open until 5:00PM. 

Gold was discovered in the Klondike River in the Yukon Territory of Canada in August 1896. When 68 rich miners and nearly two tons of gold reached Seattle in July 1897, the news set off a stampede of prospectors who bought supplies and boarded ships in Seattle hoping to strike it rich up north. As the "Gateway to the Gold Fields," the influx of nearly 70,000 people through the city was a boon to the local economy.

When M was younger, he was totally into Discovery Channel's "Gold Rush", which is a reality show about modern-day miners and their efforts to hit paydirt in the Klondike. (We stopped watching awhile ago, but it's still on TV.) So when we saw the museum exhibit about mining practices, I smiled because we already knew all about panning, sluicing, and dredging from the show.

Stampeders purchased their "ton of goods" in Seattle

I really like the design of bottom card!

It was about 4:30PM when we left the visitor center to go to RH and C's house on the Eastside. I was surprised that we didn't get caught in any rush hour traffic leaving the city. Since they hadn't gotten home yet, we hit up a couple different Starbucks in town hunting for location-specific gift cards. Yep - this is yet another thing we try to collect while traveling, which is especially weird considering that neither of us drinks coffee!

RH and C fixed a delicious dinner for us, which we devoured since we hadn't really eaten anything since breakfast. Even better was the yummy apple crisp that C made with the apples we picked in Stehekin!  

Was that only a week ago?  We've done so much since then, it's hard to keep track of time! Only one more full day left to our vacation. Tomorrow we'll go back to Seattle to play tourist.

195 miles