Panama Hotel and Japanese American history

The Panama Hotel, built in 1910 in Seattle's Chinatown-International District, is a historic lodging and commercial building that preserved a collection of personal belongings left behind by Japanese American customers during World War II mass incarceration. The hotel's attic collection and the hotel's history have been subjects of museum exhibitions and scholarship on Japanese American experiences in the Pacific Northwest. The Panama Hotel operates as a business and cultural site that interprets this local chapter of U.S. history.