I enjoy walking along the shore of Commencement Bay in Tacoma because it is lined with industrial relics, parks, modern shipping facilities, and memorials to my new home’s international connections. But Tacoma, like so many cities, also has a dark past that it acknowledges in many ways. Today’s post is a memorial to one of those darker times.

The memorial park is only a few acres, strung along the narrow stretch of land between the railroad and the sea.

The port of Tacoma’s container handling facilities can be seen in the background, a reminder that life goes on despite the too-often shameful past.

China was suffering from famine and misery in the late nineteenth century. America was seen by some as an escape from poverty and certain death, just as for immigrants from Europe. Immigrating didn’t require visas or approval; if you arrived, you were welcomed, especially the Chinese who took menial jobs to support the industrial development of the Pacific Northwest. They came looking for gold, but settled for whatever they could find. They were welcomed…until economic hard times made them the scapegoats of overall business downturns. Tacoma residents evicted them with extreme prejudice. They sued but were defeated in a court system as racially discriminatory as the people persecuting them. They never received compensation for property or business investments stolen from them.

This is my favorite display because it uses rocks to make its point: the bowed backs of Chinese immigrants are carved in bas relief on blocks of diorite; columnar andesite stands in mute witness to their plight.

This beautiful display has to be seen in parts, but one interpretation is fairly simple: a minor barrier confronts the immigrant, but life abounds behind it, if you can only climb over the low wall…

Beyond the wall is the sea, whose level rises and falls with the tides of history and human events…

A well-constructed bridge will take you over the sea to the promised land…

To a home that is linked to the land you left behind. This pagoda was given to Tacoma by Fuzhou, China–a sister city of Tacoma where many of the immigrants came from. It was built there and transported to this location after the park was authorized by the city in 1993.

I’m not sure what this is about. There was no plaque or explanation anywhere to be found. Tacoma is filled with artwork, but it usually has an explanation. I looked at the park’s web site, but this sculpture wasn’t shown. It faces almost due north…

There was a lot of tropical/Asian vegetation, just as there is throughout the Pacific Northwest. CoPilot thinks the flowered shrub here is Pieris japonica. Japanese. The dwarf conifer is also probably native to Japan. Americans have trouble differentiating different Asian countries, but we also don’t know where Hungary is, or even Switzerland for that matter.