The Sting at the Pier
Two Tacoma residents were ensnared in a federal bribery trap set by immigration inspectors at the docks.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Two Japanese residents of Tacoma, C. Imuizumi and Rizzo Kasahari, were placed on trial before a jury in the federal court at Seattle accused of offering a bribe to United States Immigration Inspectors W. B. Estell and A. S. Fulton. They induced the inspectors to look the other way when the wife and niece of Kasahari walked down the gangplank of the Oriental liner Olympia in October. The men walked into a cleverly laid trap prepared by the inspectors; after tendering $50 in gold, they were placed under arrest on bribery charges. The inspectors had two witnesses secreted behind furniture in their office when the bribe was made, and their testimony was introduced by the prosecution.
“The men themselves walked into a cleverly laid trap, prepared by the immigration inspectors.”
This incident highlights the intense scrutiny and discriminatory enforcement applied to Japanese immigrants during the pre-World War I era in Tacoma, where immigration policy was frequently a tool of exclusion rather than mere administration.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.