By Becky Chan
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Japanese Gulch. The name invites you to wonder about its past in Mukilteo.
Edmonds College faculty members Ashley Pickard and Dr. Alicia Valentino wanted their students to do just that, to wonder and be curious. They led 22 students and four interns in an Archaeology Field School class from July 7 to Aug. 1, digging for truth at the Japanese Gulch.
The gulch is a drainage basin that became a city park with trails and waterfront access. It’s in the Seattle metropolitan area, so yes, there is a dog park and a community garden. It’s hard to imagine that a lumber company once operated here, from 1903 to 1930, first as Mukilteo Lumber Company, then as Crown Lumber Company.
The lumber company hired the Japanese immigrants who had begun arriving in the U.S. for better opportunities in the late-1800s. They were an affordable labor source. Mukilteo’s initial hostility towards the newcomers turned into tolerance despite violent racial tension elsewhere.
The company housed the Japanese workers and their families in wooden buildings down a ravine with a creek running through it. At the height of the company’s lumber production, the Japanese were half of Mukilteo’s population of 350.
The stories from this Japanese community await the field school to unearth.
The site came to the attention of Dr. Valentino in 2012 when she was part of a cultural resource management team on a salmon restoration project at the gulch. It was the first field school at the gulch, a collaboration between Edmonds College and Everett Community College. The focus was on salmon habitat, not people.
In conducting the second field school, this time focusing on the once thriving Japanese community at the gulch, Dr. Valentino wanted the students to “have a greater appreciation of the past and different life experiences.”
“I wanted to train the next generation of archaeologists and introduce them to the fun of archaeology,” said Dr. Valentino, associate faculty member at Edmonds who also runs the Cultural Resources Group at Psomas, a private engineering firm.
Joshua Price (left) and Brandon Nguyen preparing the unit for digging. (Photo by Becky Chan)
This field school has no prerequisites and is local. It is easily accessible to students being close to public transit. The students got a crash course on the first day and then learned to prepare the site before digging.
“Community archaeology is incredibly valuable because it connects archaeology with the people who actually live in or near the places being studied,” said Edmonds’Anthropology Department Head, Ashley Pickard.
Students cleaning the artifacts. (Photo by Becky Chan)
Artifacts found at the gulch were everyday objects–-toothbrush, shoes, dishware, etc.
“These objects help tell the story of everyday life for members of the community—what they had access to, what they valued, what their daily routines looked like,” said Pickard.
Michiko Wild cataloging artifacts. (Photo by Becky Chan)
Michiko Wild of Seattle graduated from the University of Washington in anthropology in 2022. They are a sansei, a third-generation Japanese American.
(Left) Lara Mai Tjernagel and Barrett Massend shifting the Gulch soil. (Photo by Becky Chan)
On the day the Asian Weekly visited the site, Wild was working with a couple other students on shards of pottery found from the dig. The blue and white curve pieces brushed clean of the earth from where they had been buried for decades. The curvature indicated possibly pieces of Barrett some rice bowls.
Tiny bat on pottery piece. (Photo by Becky Chan)
“Look, this is Mount Fuji!” Wild said excitedly, as they pointed to a tiny blue drawing of a mountain on the pottery. They showed off another fragment of a white ceramic with a bat, which means “prosperity.” Wild had no personal connection to the site but took the course since archaeological sites relating to Japanese culture are limited.
“There aren’t a lot of field schools in Washington. I was very lucky to go to this field school,” Wild said. They are considering teaching in the future.
(Standing left) Dr. Alicia Valentino and (right)Archaeologist Chris Yamamoto speaking to Edmonds College Field School students. (Photo by Becky Chan)
Besides hands-on experience, students heard from archaeologist Chris Yamamoto, who works for Environmental Science Associates. Yamamoto visited the site at the invitation of Dr. Valentino, a former colleague. He spoke to the students about careers, having worked in the Olympic National Park and in private sectors.
Yamamoto is a fourth-generation Japanese American. He learned from his mom that his great-grandfather lived at the gulch. It is Yamamoto’s first visit to the site although he recalled fishing in the water just beyond the gulch when he was a kid.
Yamamoto’s grandfather, Yoshio Noma, was born in Everett in 1914. The year coincides with the operation of the lumber company in the gulch. Yamamoto’s mother told him his great-grandfather probably worked at that lumber company after the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years and extended for another 10 years. With the disappearance of cheap Chinese laborers, the lumber company turned to the Japanese.
During World War II, the Nomas were incarcerated at Minidoka in Idaho. After the war, they relocated back to Washington. The younger Nomas settled in Queen Anne in Seattle.
Yamamoto told the students at the gulch that Washington state is a good place to live and work in cultural resource management. The state values cultural resources and has strict regulations in place to protect them.
Before the passage of the National Historical Preservation Act in 1966, “there’s no regulatory guidance…you can do whatever you want,” Dr. Valentino chimed in about the previous unchecked development on federal lands. The 1966 Act protects the nation’s heritage. State regulations followed suit to protect state resources.
The goal is to get the maximum information with the least disturbance. Dr. Valentino stressed, “We don’t want to destroy a site. We want to be good stewards of history, no matter whose history it is.”
At the end of the day, archaeology is really about telling the story of people in the past,” said Pickard.
Around the gulch, students didn’t excavate the brick that was half exposed or the toothbrush that looked like someone had haphazardly stuck in the dirt. They would leave them alone to preserve in place. They know enough of the story of the Japanese Gulch.