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This challenge starts gradual in Pioneer Square. After a slight one-block walk up and over a bridge that crosses sub-ground railroad tracks, head north to S Washington St for an intensive three-block hill climb up to the Nippon Kan.
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Also known as: Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park Before World War II, Japanese Americans owned and managed as many as 2/3 of all of Seattle’s hotels. The Cadillac Hotel was no exception. It was run by Kamekichi and Haruko Tokita from 1936 until World War II forced their removal and incarceration. Today, the site is the location of the NPS Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park where you can...
Learn more about Cadillac Hotel (#22)Mile: 0.00
Tucked away in this urban streetscape is a lush garden, designed by landscape architect Maso Kinoshita. Born in California in 1925, he was a Kibei – born in the U.S. but educated in Japan – having spent his childhood in Japan, returning to the U.S. at the age of 15. During World War II, he was incarcerated in Arkansas’ Rohwer concentration camp and then served in the U.S. Military Intelligence...
Learn more about Waterfall Garden Park (#21)Mile: 0.06
Also known as: M. Furuya Company Masajiro Furuya founded the Furuya Company in 1892. Although it started as a tailor shop, Furuya grew the company to amass retail, import-export, labor contracting and banking businesses. Historian Gary Iwamoto describes him as “perhaps the most prominent local [Seattle] businessman of the early 20th century” and “certainly the top businessman among Japanese on the Pacific Coast” during that period. Furuya built his company...
Learn more about Furuya Company (#20)Mile: 0.08
Although completed in early 2016, Hirabayashi Place is a building that merges the past to the present with a call to the future. Built by InterIm CDA, this seven-story, 96-unit affordable housing project provides a new anchor for Nihonmachi along its western edge. The building is named in honor of Gordon Hirabayashi. While many Japanese Americans during World War II demonstrated their loyalty to America by serving in the U.S....
Learn more about Hirabayashi Place (#19)Mile: 0.20
Also known as: Astor Hotel “It was a cultural center. It was a place where you could see the different arts, the dance programs from Japan as well as programs that were developed in the community itself…. It was a nice place for the community to have a place to go.” - May Sasaki Built in 1909, the Nippon Kan soon became the cultural center for Seattle’s Japanese American community....
Learn more about Nippon Kan (#17)Mile: 0.39
