Let me frame this post and the embedded podcast below by saying the issue here is not to shame the Pike Place Market Foundation for backing out of hosting the observance of this year’s Day of Remembrance in Seattle at the market stalls, which before the war were three-fourths occupied by Issei truck farmers from the Eastside and Green River Valley. The Market should be held to account, and they have since apologized.

No, I believe the bigger story here is that this was the first local instance of a public event being canceled simply out of fear — fear of reprisals from the new federal regime in Washington DC. under Executive Order 14151, among the flurry of orders signed on the day of the inauguration of the new president, under the banner, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.”

The weaponizing of the term DEI is just a code word for race. We’ve moved past the dog-whistles, this is racism out in the open clinging to the fig leaf of coded language.

Shareholders of Costco, the Kirkland-based shopping giant, won national acclaim for refusing to buckle under to this manufactured hysteria and standing behind its diversity-hiring initiatives. That was a bright spot for the Northwest. Then I saw this post in my Bluesky feed on Sunday, February 9th:

I was among those who reposted Kiku’s message with a “WTF?” KING 5 News in Seattle got a statement from the Pike Place Market Foundation saying that the DOR’s message of resistance to mass deportation “did not align with its purpose as a social service organization.”

I have no inside information, but the Tsuru DOR program was evidently aligned with the Foundation’s values after the election. It was even aligned even after the inauguration. It was only after the intentional chaos of memos cancelling Black History Months and Latinx fraternal organizations throughout the government and military that the Market Foundation got scared and bent a knee. It complied to authority in advance, no doubt to protect the millions they’ve received in federal grants for their important social programs.

After an outcry, former Seattle City Councilmember John Okamoto and others communicated with the Market, the Foundation, and some individuals in leadership. The Market Foundation went into crisis communications mode and came back with a statement of “Our Public Apology.”

Like all authoritarians, this administration will test how much people will accept and how far it can go to execute its agenda. Compliance in advance only encourages more oppression. Columnist Naomi Ishisaka of The Seattle Times today summarized this episode in her column, “Fear, not courage, on display as Day of Remembrance moved from Pike Place,” and accurately identifies this as a critical moment:

“This period in our country’s history is going to require tremendous amounts of courage to stand up for the best of our values and principles — against a federal government and its allies determined to destroy them. Many organizations and individuals have already acquiesced to the will of the Trump administration to erase trans people, gut all programs that could advance equity and justice, and, as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote last week, reinforce segregation in government and public life.”

My thanks to Feliks Banel for allowing me to vent on his Seattle-based podcast, Cascade of History, not just about the Pike Place Market and the DOR but more broadly about the need for schools, libraries, and public agencies to resist pressure from this new federal regime to erase history and the experience of people of color, immigrants, and all marginalized, non-white, communities.

UPDATE: Tsuru for Solidarity moved the Day of Remembrance event to Chiyo’s Garden in the Seattle Chinatown-International District. This one felt different from all those previous.

At the first DOR we created here in 1978, we were 2,000 Nikkei strong in remembering the camps and standing for redress with our families. In 2025, of the hundreds who packed the garden space and peered in through the gates from Nihonmachi Alley off Jackson, close to half were white allies who stood and nodded at the remarks with graven faces, standing with us as “the friends we didn’t have in 1942,” and all of us taking a stand against the white nationalist glee we’ve seen in the last four weeks at the permission they now have from national leadership to attack, demean, and marginalize immigrants and people of color on all fronts.

Those dressed in period clothing to re-enact the forced removal included Erin Shigaki and her father, Vince Schleitwiler and his son, and Shawn Brinsfield, the nephew of “Nisei Daughter” authorMonica Sone, who brought the actual duffel bag she carried with her from Beacon Hill to the Puyallup Fairgrounds, marked with her childhood name of Kazuko Itoi.

UPDATE 2: From The Seattle Times:
Pike Place Market Foundation head resigns after event cancellation.

UPDATE 3: Thanks to Derek Tahara for his coverage quoting me from the podcast in the Nichi Bei News:
Pike Place foundation rescinds offer to host Seattle DOR