The Chinatown–International District is a neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It is the center of the city's Asian American community. Within the district are the three neighborhoods known as Chinatown, Japantown and Little Saigon, named for the concentration of businesses owned by people of Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese descent, respectively. The geographic area also once included Manilatown.
The International Examiner is a free monthly Asian American newspaper and media nonprofit organization based in Seattle, Washington's historic Chinatown International District (CID). It was founded in 1974 by Gerald Yuasa and Lawrence Imamura to serve what the founders thought were the business interests of the Asian American community in Seattle's CID. In 2023, the IE published its 50th volume, identifying five areas of coverage: public safety, the arts, housing, transportation, cultural preservation, and commerce. With its print editions distributed across Seattle, and articles published on a rolling basis online, its total monthly readership is estimated at 20,000.
Wing Chong Luke was a Chinese-American lawyer and politician from Seattle.
The Wing Luke Museum is a museum in Seattle, Washington, United States, which focuses on the culture, art and history of Asian Pacific Americans. It is located in the city's Chinatown-International District. Established in 1967, the museum is a Smithsonian Institution affiliate and the only pan-Asian Pacific American community-based museum in the country. It has relocated twice since its founding, most recently to the East Kong Yick Building in 2008. In February 2013 it was recognized as one of two dozen affiliated areas of the U.S. National Park Service.
Franklin High School is a public high school in Seattle, Washington, located in its Mount Baker neighborhood and administered by Seattle Public Schools.
Hing Hay Park is a 0.64-acre (2,600 m2) public park in the Chinatown–International District neighborhood of downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. The park is located on the north side of South King Street between 6th and Maynard avenues, east of Union Station and the Historic Chinatown Gate. It was built in 1973 and includes a pavilion, community games, and two gateways.
Roger Shimomura is an American artist and a retired professor at the University of Kansas, having taught there from 1969 to 2004. His art, showcased across the United States, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and Israel, often combines American popular culture, traditional Asian tropes, and stereotypical racial imagery to provoke thought and debate on issues of identity and social perception.
Robert Alan Hasegawa is an American labor leader and politician serving as a member of the Washington State Senate, representing the 11th Legislative District since January 2013. Hasegawa is a lifelong resident of Seattle's Beacon Hill. He previously served in the Washington State House of Representatives, and is retired from the Teamsters Union where he was a member and union leader for over 32 years.
The East Kong Yick Building is one of two buildings erected in Seattle, Washington's Chinatown-International District (ID) by the Kong Yick Investment Company. A four-story hotel in the core of the ID, with retail stores at ground level, the East Kong Yick was created by the pooled resources of 170 Chinese American pioneers. In, 2008, the building reopened as the home of the expanded Wing Luke Asian Museum.
Densho is a nonprofit organization based in Seattle, Washington whose mission is “to preserve and share history of the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans to promote equity and justice today.” Densho collects video oral histories, photos, documents, and other primary source materials regarding Japanese American history, with a focus on the World War II period and the incarceration of Japanese Americans. Densho offers a free digital archive of these primary sources. It also maintains an online encyclopedia of notable Japanese Americans and related topics and an educational curricula.
Bassetti Architects is an architectural firm based in Seattle, Washington with a second office in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1947, the firm has newly designed or substantially renovated several well-known Seattle landmarks and many schools in the greater Seattle-Tacoma area. This includes several buildings at the Pike Place Market, the Jackson Federal Building, Seattle City Hall, the Seattle Aquarium, Franklin High School, Raisbeck Aviation High School, Roosevelt High School, and Stadium High School. The firm's work has been awarded local, national, and international awards.
Richard Weiss is an American glass artist.
The Seattle Asian American Film Festival was founded in 1985 and has been revived over the years by different producers. The current iteration was founded in 2012 and made its debut in 2013 by co-founders Kevin Bang and Vanessa Au. It is a revival of of the previously running Northwest Asian American Film Festival, which was directed by Wes Kim from 2003 to 2007 and which had experienced a five-year hiatus. The inaugural film festival was also held at the Wing Luke Asian Museum from January 25 to 27, 2013. The festival is currently run and directed by Executive Director, Vanessa Au, and Festival Director, Victoria Ju.
Asian Washingtonians are residents of the state of Washington who are of Asian ancestry. As of the 2020 census, Asian-Americans were 730,596 (9.5%) of the state's population.
Greater Seattle has had a Chinese American community almost since its founding in 1851. Chinese workers arriving in the 1860s were welcomed, because the Seattle area was sparsely settled and workers were needed; within a few decades, however, newly arrived white settlers resented the Chinese workers, and there were several anti-Chinese riots as the whites attempted to expel the Chinese from the area. Chinese settlement persisted, with the immigrants settling in a well-defined Chinatown where they maintained their culture through family groups, associations, and churches. In the mid-20th century Chinese Americans joined with other immigrant groups to oppose racial discrimination. In 1962 a Chinese American became the first person of Asian ancestry to hold elective office in the state of Washington.
Midori Kono Thiel is a Japanese American calligrapher based in Seattle. She grew up on Maui. She received her bachelor of arts and master of fine arts from the University of California, Berkeley. She has exhibited at the De Young Museum, San Francisco; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; Seattle Art Museum; Portland Art Museum; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Cheney Cowles Art Museum, Spokane; and the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, Seattle.
Canton Alley is a historic alley between 7th and 8th Avenues South in Seattle's Chinatown–International District, in the United States. It borders the East Kong Yick Building, which houses the Wing Luke Museum, and has hosted various community events.
The Eastern Hotel is a historic building in Seattle's Chinatown–International District, in the U.S. state of Washington. Located at 506 Maynard Avenue S, the structure was commissioned by Chun Ching Hock for the Wa Chong Company and built by contractor David Dow in 1911. The building has been designated a historical landmark and "won a distinguished award for affordable housing" from the Seattle chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
Cindy Domingo is a Filipina-American activist and community organizer from Seattle, Washington. Domingo played a key role in Asian American and Filipino American activism in the 1970s and 1980s and became a leader in her community.
Donald Gregory Chin was an Asian American activist and community leader who founded and operated the International District Emergency Center (IDEC). Chin founded IDEC with childhood friend and photojournalist Dean Wong in 1968, due to slow response times by Seattle police and fire services to emergency calls in the Chinatown-International District (CID). In the early hours of July 23, 2015, Chin was shot and killed during a gun battle between two rival groups. As of 2024, his murder remains unsolved.
