Upon arrival at the Panama Hotel, I knew I was in for an adventure. The front door opens to a long staircase: 15 wooden steps, then a landing followed by another set of 15 steps. It was one of those times I regret never mastering the art of traveling light. Like any good local girl, my suitcase is loaded with gifts—gifts for friends, for new colleagues, and for random others who might be encountered during the journey. My Seattle host inquires next door at the Panama Hotel Tea & Coffee House as to whether there is by chance an elevator. The young Asian barrista with black ponytail, who will not experience the trials of back injury for years to come, replies disdainfully that no, this is, after all, an historic landmark. So my loyal friend gallantly hoists the fat black bag up the stairs to first landing, and then onto the second, while I fret aloud about his health. Reaching the summit, we find a small locked office where piles of paper have overwhelmed 2 small desks, leaving no room for occupants. A large caramel-colored cat sleeps curled on a table in the adjoining common room surrounded by an old but functional computer, TV, videotapes, worn couches, various books and brochures, all in comfortable disarray. After a few minutes an African American man wearing overalls and carrying a cane appears on the landing and asks if we need help. Extending a hand, I introduce myself and indicate I’m checking in. His name is Richard, he is a carpenter, “like Jesus but without the goodness”, and he lives in the hotel. Richard doesn’t usually check folks in, but begins fishing through a small drawer in a tiny wooden desk adorned by an enormous vase of flowers at the pinnacle of the stairs. Richard asks me to sign what looks like a home guest book, assuming I have no reservation. Apparently, there are plenty of rooms available. He pulls out a set of two copper colored keys attached to a plastic teardrop shaped tag, hand numbered 116. The second key opens the door to room 116 and, despite the disconcerting start, it is love at first sight. A corner room with windows overlooking the street, there are white lacey curtains billowing in a gentle cross-breeze. The metal frame bed is high off the ground, firm yet Princess-and-the-Pea soft, with a thick white comforter. Four large white pillows are fronted by two small decorative pillows, dark purple velveteen with flower appliqués and large buttons in the back. The walls hold long rectangular Japanese prints. The room is just large enough to accommodate a closet, dresser with large mirror, and a small table with chair by the window, but yoga stretches require imagination. A small sink and toiletry cabinet occupies the corner behind the door. Bathroom facilities are en pension, shared in the European tradition. The second key on my tag opens the door to a pleasant, well-maintained “Women’s Toilet” containing a commode, sink and bathtub, with shared shower located further down the hall. The set up is simple: one individually wrapped bar of soap was placed in the bathrooms each morning, but it’s BYOS (bring your own shampoo). There are no little baskets of upscale shampoos and lotions to take home in your luggage.
The Panama Hotel was built in 1910, designed by the first Japanese architect to graduate from the University of Washington and its basement holds the last remaining sento or Japanese bathhouse in the US. Located at the corner of 6th and Main Street, it sits in the heart of what was Nihonmachi or Japantown, once a thriving community of Seattle with a rich array of Japanese American-owned businesses, including laundries, banks, groceries, bathhouses, restaurants, and hotels. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 resulted in the “evacuation” and imprisonment of 120,000 men, women and children of Japanese ancestry, two thirds of them US citizens. At least 2,000 Seattle residents joined thousands of others from Washington state in internment camps, first in temporary digs at fair grounds and stables on the outskirts of Seattle, then later transferred to the interior of the country, places like Idaho and Nevada, where it was believed they could not be a threat in the event of a feared West Coast invasion by Japan. The residents of Nihonmachi were given less than a week to prepare and a strict limit on belongings they could bring, so most left behind precious family heirlooms, some in the basement of the Panama Hotel. When a new owner began renovations in the 1980’s, this cache of cultural treasures was discovered and publicized, but much remained unclaimed. Today, the renovated and preserved Panama Hotel houses a charming and unique gourmet tea and coffee house which doubles as a museum, the red brick walls covered with black and white photos of Nihonmachi in the late 19th and early 20th century. Towards the back of the long rectangular room, past the coffee bar, one can peak into this past: A window in the floor offers a view of a dimly lit corner of the basement where suitcases, books, kimono and other belongings remain. A large back room has a long wooden table used as a gathering place for community meetings. And yes, in 2006 the hotel was declared a National Historic Landmark.
“You seem like the kind of person we would put in 116”, says Greg. Is that a compliment?, I wonder. Greg, Caucasian with receding hairline and small ponytail, is the first person who seems to actually be in charge of the place, and I don’t meet him till 9:30 pm on my second night in Seattle. In between I meet Trevor, who will be there all night with his frail asthmatic dog, one of at least 5 colorful people of various ages and ethnicities who live and work in the hotel “for trade”. Trevor is looking for an additional job, he discloses, as we sit in the common room along with one of the few other guests I ever see, trying and failing to get the advertised wireless connection on my laptop. “I’m good with people, I like to talk with them, and have a great smile”, he muses in between advising me to try “Renew” and “Repair” to no avail. The Panama cast of characters included Renaissance, a well-spoken young man with an Afro, and Cassandra, the Hispanic housekeeper who speaks just like the Brazilian mahu maid in The Bird Cage. I tell her how impressed I am with the cleanliness of the place. While the facilities are worn and funky, my room and the bathrooms are spotless, comfortable, light and clean. She looks pleased, then apologetic, responding that she should have made my bed this morning, but her boss wasn’t in. I never do see this mysterious boss, despite leaving her a handwritten note on the first day, requesting a tour of the sento (Japanese baths) in the basement. The place appears to run itself well enough without her. When Greg shows up, he presents me with a “yukata”, a soft cotton kimono-style robe, useful for those morning and nighttime treks to the toilet and showers. He reports there are 106 rooms, 80 available as hotel rooms, with the remainder housing residents who work for trade or pay by the week. I wonder if they get many regular hotel guests; in 3 nights, I noticed only 3 of us. Reservations are in the laissez faire tradition. When making travel plans, there was no response to an email inquiry, and when I called, whoever answered advised me to call back between certain hours, adding that it was no problem to call a week in advance because for sure there would be openings. According to Greg, Panama “is a clean and sober facility”, a fact I forgot one night when I brought a glass of wine up to my room from the Coffee and Tea House (which is obviously exempted from the alcohol free zone).
A few weeks before traveling to Seattle, I began reading Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a novel centered around the Panama Hotel and the surrounding neighborhoods of Chinatown and Japantown during World War II. It tells the tale of a Chinese boy, a Japanese girl, and a black saxophone player who cross cultural boundaries to forge a friendship that is disrupted by the 1942 “evacuation” of Nihonmachi. The book hops back and forth between the 1940’s when the main character, Henry, is a boy living in Seattle’s Chinatown, and 1980’s when he is an aging widower trying to make peace with his past. The story revolves around the Panama Hotel at these two points in history, describing how the run down building was bought and renovated by a new owner in the 1980’s, a Caucasian women. In the course of renovation, she discovers the sento baths and the Japanese belongings stored in the basement, and publicizes the discovery to encourage families to step forward and make claims. According to the notoriously reliable Wikipedia Jan Johnson has owned the hotel since 1985, so we can assume she was the inspiration for this character. To this reader, the book’s title proved to be its most finely crafted aspect. While it contains a compelling story that makes a shameful history more real and wrenching than facts alone can accomplish, the simplistic, repetitive writing style at times seriously irritated me. Could this have been intended as a children’s book? The author did write the dedication to his wife and “Brady Bunch” of 6 children.
In Hawaii, where my husband was born and raised, the experience of most Americans of Japanese ancestry (AJA’s) stood in contrast to that of their Mainland counterparts. My husband’s Okinawan and Japanese parents were born and raised in rural sugar plantation towns on Kauai and the Big Island. They were children when Pearl Harbor, on the island of O’ahu, was attacked, and the US subsequently entered WWII. There was no mass evacuation and internment of Hawaii AJA’s, though selected individuals perceived by the US government as high risk were detained. An estimated 1,250 educators, religious and community leaders were imprisoned at camps at Sand Island and Honouliuli, while others were sent to Mainland prison camps. It has been suggested mass evacuation simply wasn’t feasible due to the large numbers of AJA’s in Hawaii (140,000 or 37% of the islands’ population), the economic needs and labor requirements of the sugar industry, the actions of a few principled and far-sighted military and civilian leaders in Hawaii, or all of the above. My mother-in-law recalls how the war brought soldiers to the islands. Some were friendly young men, who played with the local children and clearly missed their families. For the first time, she says, she realized that there were different brands of haole; that not all Caucasians were rich, upper class plantation and business owners who lived in a world apart from theirs. Some were young men from small towns and poor families, not entirely unlike themselves. So, while Hawaii was affected by the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry based solely upon their race, the disruption of community and culture was not nearly so severe as it was for Seattle. In fact, a simplistic, partially mythological telling of our state’s history portrays the war as the seminal event that propelled Hawaii out of its feudal oligarchic slumber. The stars are the AJA’s from Hawaii who voluntarily joined the US military to prove their worth and loyalty, overcame prejudices, distinguished themselves in the famed 100th and 442nd battalions, and got educated under the GI bill. They then returned home to become key political leaders in Hawaii’s non-violent Democratic revolution, a multi-ethnic coalition of plantation and dockworker labor unions that out-organized and outvoted entrenched Republican landowners and businessmen for the first time since the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893.
Today, the Panama Hotel is located in the heart of Seattle’s International District (the ID, as locals affectionately call it), where community leaders have worked hard and lovingly to rebuild, restore and plan for appropriate growth that reflects the district’s roots, cultural heritage, strengths, and dreams for the future. A sign posted on the red brick wall of a restored building on 6th Avenue reads: “The element of Water represents the North and a time of meditation and rebirth of ourselves and our community. This spirit flows through our history as we reflect on stories of a community that has overcome many obstacles.” During my short stay, aside from visiting a community health center, and eating some pretty decent Chinese food, I merely scratched the surface of this bustling multicultural neighborhood. Dropped by Higo 10 Cents Store, mostly museum, partly store, where nothing costs 10 cents no more. At the other end of the commercial continuum is Uwajimaya, a pan-Asian department and food store, including a bookstore that is very Hello-Kitty-meets-Borders, and an enormous food market and food court that is sort of Shirokiya-meets-Whole- Foods. Centrally located for exploring the ID and wider Seattle by foot or public transit, the hotel is only a couple blocks from the new Seattle Sound Transit system, which offers free transport to downtown and the waterfront piers, and within easy walking distance of the downtown Pioneer Square area.
“I’ve built 2 dungeons,” volunteers Richard, whose business card reads Rich Finish Carpentry Group: Specializing in Cabinet-making, Closets Porches & Decks, Wine Cellars & Dungeons… ” He continues: “Why these men wanna get peed on and whipped instead of going home to their wives, I just don’t know”. Ooookay…quickly extricating myself from wherever this might be heading, I high tail it upstairs to my little room. I was told by Seattlites not to walk around the ID after 8 pm on my own, and there were a few inner city reminders here: One night an angry voice with excellent range and projection shouted a stream of profanities at someone real or imaginary from inside of the Daniel Woo Gardens, a terraced hillside of community gardens across from the hotel. When the cacophony ceased, I went down to the Tea Room where I was to meet my Seattle friend for a late snack after his evening shift at the medical clinic, and found Greg pacing the sidewalk smoking a cigarette while muttering it was too hot to smoke. After the angry outburst and the almost 100 degree summer day, it felt cool and calm out there under the neon Panama Hotel sign. On my third night, yet another work-trader, Paul, introduced himself as “the security guard”, though no one seemed highly concerned about security. There is no lock on the front door at the foot of that long staircase, which should keep at least obese malfeasants at bay. Supposedly someone is on duty all night, though in my experience the de-facto definition of “on duty” varied from visible to invisible.
After my stay, I read some user reviews on line, and not surprisingly, folks either love or hate the Panama Hotel Bed and Breakfast/Tea & Coffee House. Experienced taxi drivers warn the “cruise boat crowd” away from the place, according to one such person who ignored her cabby’s advice and subsequently wrote a scathing review after transferring to another locale. If amenities are what matter stay away; if you gotta have AC or can’t abide intermittent Internet access, this ain’t for you. But if you enjoy a scene both simple and complex, historic and off the beaten path, then, as we say in Hawaii, chance 'um. Aside from the fluffy comforter, my favorite amenity was access day and night to the Panama Hotel Tea & Coffee House with their complimentary continental urban breakfast: mine was a thick slice of squash bread and a double shot latte made with Italian LAvAzzA coffee– alright! By my second day, I learned to tell the barrista when Internet access disappeared and she would calmly re-set the wireless by unplugging and re-plugging the modem. Holding down the corner of 6th and Main in busy urban Seattle, the Panama hotel is like a small town. The adventure of immersion in an historic neighborhood and this eccentric sub-cultural enclave is well worth the cost of admission.
