Pasco Businesses Plastered With 'Fire the Jap' Stickers
A racist labor campaign targets Japanese workers in every Pasco business house—even the saloons and noodle shops.
Pasco—In every business house in the city where Japanese labor is employed, small yellow stickers with the words "Fire the Jap" plaster the walls. In saloons, beer and whiskey glasses are masses of stickers, and in the Japanese restaurants noodle bowls and tea urns represent gaudy bill boards on which is displayed in bold type "Fire the Jap."
“In every business house in the city where Japanese labor is employed, small yellow stickers with the words "Fire the Jap" plaster the walls.”
This 1909 campaign against Japanese workers in Pasco is an early example of the exclusion politics that would culminate in Washington's alien land laws and, later, Japanese American incarceration. The stickers were not mere graffiti: they were an organized attempt to drive laborers out of town and control who could earn a living. The language is reprinted only because it is the historical record; the paper's casual racism should not be mistaken for neutral reporting.
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