The Atlas Shrugs:
The Rise, Fall, Rise and Fall of Seattle's Most Unique Theatre

The new Atlas Theatre, Seattle, 1918. (Moving Picture World, 14 December 1918, Page 1225)

Preview

Silent film history is, in many cases, a white history. Audiences of all races and ethnicities attended the movies, but certain minorities were sometimes forced to sit apart from the rest of the audience, in accordance with local custom or law. In Washington, at least, there were several theatres that had more liberal seating policies, but often they were smaller venues that operated only briefly or left behind few records, so their histories are difficult to trace.

But in one case, at least, Seattle was different. Consider at the history of the Atlas Theatre in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood, built by Japanese owners in 1919. This was a modern theatre of the first order; the films were American, but the clientele was largely Asian. It stood as the neighborhood gem when it debuted, and remained an important gathering place throughout the 1920s, but the original luster wouldn’t last. The fortunes of the Atlas fell along with the broader neighborhood during the Depression, after which it limped along into the 1950s, known more for crime and vagrancy than the pictures it showed. Normally, that would have been the end of the line – any number of theatres in Seattle’s so-called “better” neighborhoods were being shut down by this time, victims of a newer era and a populace that was expanding outward after World War II. And yet the Atlas managed to survive, in an area that seemed unable to support it. That’s because the venue was completely revitalized in the 1960s, leaving behind its former history and transforming into one of the West Coast’s first all-Asian movie theatres, showing Japanese, Chinese and Filipino movies for the better part of two decades.

Renamed the Kokusai, Chinatown’s Atlas Theatre was getting a second lease on life – rescued and revitalized in a much more meaningful way than period theatres in Seattle’s other various neighborhoods. And, in the process, the Kokusai (nee, the Atlas) ended up playing an important role in Chinatown’s (nee, the International District’s) history, influencing generations of residents even after its closing.

Undated photo of the Gala Theatre, Seattle. (Courtesy Washington State Archives)

Seattle exhibitor Joe Bradt, ca. 1927. (Motion Picture Record, 5 March 1927, Page 7)

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The Atlas Shrugs: The Rise, Fall, Rise and Fall of Seattle’s Most Unique Theatre

Reel 1: Lay of the Land

With respect to silent cinema, and particularly the audiences seeing these films, it’s important to remember that we’re almost always talking about white patrons attending white-owned venues, seeing productions made by white people in which all (or, at least most) the main characters were white. The audiences in local theatres may have been mixed, but unlike the American South, which often had formal restrictions limiting race mixing in social spaces, the Pacific Northwest was only “open” to a point. “[T]he northern states had their own brand of racial segregation, not always legally codified but often just as blatant,” Jim Kershner has noted. Minority populations, and African Americans in particular, were “restricted to a relatively few restaurants, shops, hotels and jobs…sometimes by policy, [but] more often by social pressure.”^[1] Theatres catering specifically to minority populations existed, but they were usually small, sometimes short-lived venues that didn’t leave much behind in the historical record, so documenting them is difficult.

In 2001 Kershner, drawing on historical texts and oral histories, laid out how African Americans in Spokane navigated the public sphere in the early 20^th century.^[2] His findings reinforce the fact that while Spokane (and by extension, other Northwest cities) didn’t have formal segregation policies, there were still significant barriers preventing black citizens, at least, from being full participants in community life. Instead, African Americans faced a complex system of knowing what to do, where it could be done and whom it could be done with. Spokane’s black population was small (less than 1% in 1920), but its public schools weren’t segregated, so on the surface the city appeared progressive. But while African American children attended the same schools, blacks weren’t welcome in the Davenport Hotel, Spokane’s finest. They could visit Natatorium Park, the city’s version of Coney Island, but The Plunge, its public pool area, was off limits. They could attend dance hall shows at the Natatorium, but only when the band was black, and not when it was white. Eating in a restaurant meant knowing which establishments served African Americans; some blacks found it easier to eat in Chinese-owned establishments and lodge in Japanese-owned hotels. “After all,” Kershner noted, “the Japanese felt the sting of segregation, too, in many of the same places that discriminated against black people.”^[3]

Racial attitudes may have differed across parts of Washington state, but many communities operated ways similar to Spokane. “Unlike most of the nation at the time,” Cecilia Goodnow wrote of Seattle’s early black residents, “Seattle had an integrated school system [in the 1920s]. But what we now call the ‘glass ceiling’ hovered just above ground level for most…” This glass ceiling extended into the city’s stage and movie venues, though it was perhaps less visible than in other areas of society. “‘There was no segregation in the theaters, as I recall it,’” remembered Seattleite LeEtta King, born in 1895. “‘We sat where we wanted to sit. So in a sense, Seattle was quite an open city.’”^[4] She was joined in that feeling by Elmo Dalbert of Spokane. “‘There was no problem in movie theatres, no Jim Crow spot upstairs…’”^[5]

They probably had Samuel Moore to thank for that. On September 15, 1918, Moore and his future wife, Sadie Miller, dropped into Spokane’s Pantages Theatre for a vaudeville show, but staff intervened and forced them to move from their chosen seats. This was the most common form of theatre segregation in the United States – designate certain areas, like the balcony, where minority audiences could be seated away from others. In this case, however, Moore sued the local Pantages and the all-white jury awarded him $200 in damages. “‘All of us were for damages from the start,’” said one juror after the trial. “‘All declared that even if a man were black he had the right to sit where he wanted to.’”^[6] The case was a moral victory, and it caused many theatres across Washington state to adjust their seating policies, though it didn’t result in widescale changes. At larger urban theatres, at least, the unwritten system of do’s and don’ts remained in place, and that was usually enough to persuade most minorities to put some distance between themselves and white patrons, if only to avoid difficulties.

Of course, some minority filmgoers just avoided large theatres altogether, and instead patronized smaller venues with more liberal mixing policies. Seattle had a number of movie theatres located south of Yesler Way, a blue-collar district bordering Chinatown and other neighborhoods with high minority populations. In the early years of the 20^th century these houses, some owned by immigrants, catered to an entirely different class of moviegoer than the larger downtown venues. Neither large nor opulent, these houses (often storefront theatres) frequently served populations that would have been less welcome in the city’s uptown movie venues.^[7]

A snapshot from 1919 underscores this point. In January and February of that year, the Woman’s Social Hygiene Department (part of the state Board of Health) conducted a survey of conditions impacting young women in the Puget Sound area.^[8] The report covered a hodge-podge of subjects, from conditions in dance halls to the prevalence of venereal disease. A lengthy section, however, was devoted to moving picture theatres in Seattle. In this case, a group of female volunteers visited theatres in the downtown area and a few outlying neighborhoods over a period of several weeks. Their method of data collection was hardly scientific. These women showed up to most locations only once, stayed long enough to complete a basic questionnaire, then used that (brief) experience to make sweeping observations about the venue’s appropriateness for women and girls.

Under this inexact microscope most of Seattle’s large downtown venues (as well as houses in its more prosperous neighborhoods) fared well in the report. The houses south of Yesler, however, not so much. By comparison they were smaller, lacked amenities and played to overwhelmingly male audiences. Many patrons were shipyard workers (the survey was conducted in the run-up to the Seattle General Strike, which skewed the findings), but there was also a diversity of races and ethnicities unlike what these women were used to seeing elsewhere. At the Jackson Theatre (519 Jackson Street), the female volunteer turned up on the evening of February 3, 1919, and observed a mix of “Japanese, Italians, Negroes, & laborers,” including at least two black families. The audience at the Bison (411 Sixth Avenue South) was nearly identical, but there also handful of Japanese families were attending the show. Meanwhile, at the Star Theatre on Occidental, all 300-plus seats were filled when the volunteer arrived, with a crowd that included “Italians, [a] few Negroes, [and] patrons on the whole better dressed than those attending the Bison & Jackson Theaters.” At the Atlas Theatre in Chinatown, which had only been open a few months, the house got high marks for cleanliness and the fact that smoking was prohibited, but the audience was described as “Negroes, Chinese, and [a] low class of Americans.” The same thing applied to the Electric Theatre (512 King Street), which was patronized by “Chinese, Japs, colored [and a] low class of whites.” The crowd at the Occidental Theatre (209 Occidental) was merely described as being “lower class,” but likely held form with these other venues. More notable, perhaps, was the fact that the female volunteer likened her experience at the Occidental to visiting a third-world country. “I consider the Occidental a very low grade ‘movie’ [theatre] and a disgrace to any city,” she began. “The room was full of smoke, and very dark. Nothing but this ‘Survey’ could have induced me to enter such a place. The streets in that section [of Seattle] were thronged with men who looked like anarchists and I felt relieved when I got back to ‘civilization.’”^[9] This female volunteer (the same one who visited the Jackson and Bison, at the very least) was clearly out of her element, working a part of Seattle she preferred to avoid, and was wholly traumatized by the experience. At the Jackson she got hit on by a well-dressed Japanese man, something she found so appalling that she scurried to the safety of a nearby policeman. Then, at the Bison, she watched as the female ticket seller got into an argument with an Italian man. This was no ordinary dispute, and it eventually spilled over into the auditorium where the cashier and several patrons engaged in a prolonged shouting match at the back of the venue while the show was in progress. Given the volunteer’s delicate sensibilities, it’s no wonder she was at the end of her rope by the time she arrived at the Occidental.

But even while minorities could see films in these mixed settings, many were more comfortable organizing shows in their own communities. As scholar Cara Caddoo has shown, it was common for traveling picture shows to appear in minority business areas or in church spaces; in the East and the South, in fact, there were informal circuits that could be traveled to show films specifically to black audiences.^[10] But these would have been temporary, intermittent engagements, unlike the permanent movie venues in Seattle’s other neighborhoods. So, when a new suburban house was constructed at 22^nd Avenue and East Madison in Seattle, it was indeed significant because the motion picture trade papers heralded it as Seattle’s first “Negro” theatre. This venue, the Anzier, opened on January 24, 1925, and eventually got a small write up in the California Eagle, an African American newspaper based out of Los Angeles. The Eagle noted that the house was enjoying ample patronage, with crowds that often spilled over into a nearby soda fountain, which became a popular hangout both before and after the show.^[11] How long the Anzier stayed a black movie theatre, however, is an open question. The venue changed ownership and managers several times during its first 15 months before Seattle exhibitor Joe Bradt bought it in the spring of 1926. Bradt changed the venue’s name to the Gala, and he may have been the one who ended the theatre’s run as an exclusively African American theatre.^[12] Ironically, however, in the 1940s the space was eventually remodeled from a movie house into the Savoy Ballroom, later known as Eastside Hall and, more importantly, Birdland, which served the local black community as a hugely influential music club.^[13]

By Eric L. Flom – November 2025

Notes:

[1] Jim Kershner, “Segregation in Spokane,” Columbia, Winter 2000-2001, Vol. 14, No. 4 (https://spokaneracism.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/segregation-in-spokane/), accessed 26 May 2021.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] LeEtta King to historian Esther Mumford in 1978, as quoted in Cecelia Goodnow, “Seattle’s Racial Tolerance Belied Employment Prejudices,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 12 February 2002. (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/lifestyle/57859_blackhistory12.shtml), accessed 28 March 2007.
[5] Elmo Daubert, as quoted in Jim Kershner, “Segregation in Spokane,” Columbia, Winter 2000-2001, Vol. 14, No. 4 (https://spokaneracism.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/segregation-in-spokane/), accessed 26 May 2021.
[6] Unnamed Spokane Superior Court juror to the Spokane Daily Chronicle, as quoted in Jim Kershner, “Segregation in Spokane,” Columbia, Winter 2000-2001, Vol. 14, No. 4 (https://spokaneracism.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/segregation-in-spokane/), accessed 26 May 2021.
[7] See Kathryn H. Fuller, At the Picture Show: Small-Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press – 1996), Pages 39-40. Now Kathryn Fuller-Seely, the author also notes that Japanese exhibitors sometimes opened venues in their communities due to the fact that many Asian cultures are more closed, so their patrons preferred to take in movie entertainment amongst their own peers.
[8] See Mrs. Aristene N. Felts and Mrs. Erminnie Sholz, Survey of Seattle and Bremerton District – April 1, 1919, compiled by the Woman’s Social Hygiene Department of the Washington State Board of Health; Seattle Public Library Special Collections Online (https://cdm16118.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15015coll6/id/411), accessed 25 July 2021. This report was compiled for Mrs. Jane Deeter Rippin, Director of the Section on Woman and Girls, Law Enforcement Division of the Commission on Training Camp Activities in Washington, D.C.
[9] Ibid., Pages 69-71, 110-111 and 124.
[10] See Cara Caddoo, Envisioning Freedom: Cinema and the Building of Modern Black Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press – 2024).
[11] See California Eagle, 8 May 1925 (https://archive.org/stream/la_caleagle_reel7/la_caleagle_reel7_djvu.txt), accessed 4 June 2017. While the opening of the Anzier Theatre was in some ways a first for Seattle, there were other movie happenings around the city to demonstrate that things hadn’t really changed that much. Over at the Paramount Theatre in Wallingford, later known as the Guild 45^th, manager William Code inaugurated a new series of stage shows presented in conjunction with his feature films. At the same time the Anzier was serving the local black community, a few miles away Code was featuring A Night in the Sunny South with a cast of four blackface performers in a comedic song and dance act. (See “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 12 February 1925, Page 797.)
[12] See “Seattle’s First Negro Theatre Now a Certainty,” Motion Picture News, 6 December 1924, Page 2978; “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 14 February 1925, Page 679; and “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 3 October 1925, Page 1614.
[13] See Clay Eals, “Seattle’s Midcentury Rhythm-and-Blues Crowd Flocked to Birdland,” Seattle Now and Then (https://pauldorpat.com/2023/03/09/seattle-now-then-birdland-1961/), accessed 30 May 2023. Seattle historian Peter Blecha looks at the Savoy, Eastside and Birdland incarnations of the old Gala Theatre in his book Stomp and Shout: R&B and the Origins of Northwest Rock and Roll (Seattle: University of Washington Press – 2023).

Atlas Theatre advertisement from September 1922. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 3 September 1922, Society-Dramatic Section, Page 7)

Atlas Theatre advertisement, ca. 1918-1919. (Courtesy Cinema Treasures Website)

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The Atlas Shrugs: The Rise, Fall, Rise and Fall of Seattle’s Most Unique Theatre

Reel 2: Big in (Little) Japan

The African American community wasn’t the only group in Seattle creating their own movie experience. An even larger population lived in the Chinatown neighborhood, known today as the International District. In 1963 Clarence Arai, a longtime resident, remembered his early film experiences as a boy. “‘I was a little tyke about 5 years old,’” Arai recalled. “‘This was about 1906. My mother would take me to see early-day Japanese films with lots of sword swinging. That’s what I went for – sword swinging and cats. They served noodles and tea in the Shibai tradition when I was a kid. I loved noodles. Still do.’” Later, when he was older, Arai attended venues such as the Electric, Bison, Jackson and Maynard Theatres, but he also recalled that movies could be seen at a neighborhood saloon that showed them occasionally as an added entertainment.^[1]

Small storefront venues like the ones Clarence Arai remembered dotted the landscape around Chinatown, in part because the neighborhood didn’t have a modern picture house to call its own. That would change in 1918, however, with the opening of the Atlas Theatre.

The Atlas, located at 412 Maynard Avenue South, debuted on November 12, 1918, opening on the heels of the Spanish Flu pandemic. It was owned and operated by Iwasuke Kaida and a Mr. Yamada, both of whom formerly ran the Bison Theatre on Sixth Avenue South. Kaida and Yamada sold the Bison in the summer of 1918 and began making plans to construct the Atlas, which they originally planned to call the Oriental Theatre.^[2]

The move by Kaida and Yamada into a formal exhibition space was something occurring in neighborhoods all around Seattle. Most of the city’s historic movie theatres, in fact, were opened between World War I and 1929 – comfortable, fully modern second- and third-run venues designed to meet the entertainment needs of Seattle’s growing “suburbs.” In Chinatown, however, the opening of the Atlas carried more significance than comparable venues operating in the Queen Anne or Fremont neighborhoods. That’s because Kaida and Yamada were tapping into a woefully underserved audience. “[T]he immigrant population wasn’t much inclined to get involved in films of [the silent] era,” local writer Ellen Kiyomizu observed in 1980. “Language barriers and social constraints prevented many from attending the major downtown theatres.”^[3] The feeling of being an “outsider” in their own city was still prevalent in the 60s and 70s when Ron Chew, future director of the Wing Luke Museum, was growing up. “Even though I lived on Beacon Hill, Chinatown felt like a second home…It wasn’t simply the place my parents worked. It was where we went to buy groceries, eat out, watch movies and theater performances, catch up with relatives and friends and go to church. It provided an emotional touchstone. I could relax and joke freely there, without regard to how the larger community might judge me.”^[4] The opening of the Atlas changed things. The residents of Chinatown now didn’t have to go outside the neighborhood for movie entertainment – they finally had a large and spacious theatre to call their own.

The Atlas Theatre was a smart, albeit modest theatre. Located on the east side of Maynard Avenue between Jackson and King Streets, it was of brick construction with a stucco finish, with a decorative metal awning jutting over the sidewalk. The interior design wasn’t described in Moving Picture World, which reported on the opening, other than to say it was “simply but effectively decorated.” Most likely, however, the design tapped into a Far East theme. Many theatres of this period had exotic interior designs (French or Spanish, for example), but the Atlas was probably one of those rare cases were the interior actually reflected the character of the neighborhood it served.

The venue sat almost 500, but a distinct feature of the auditorium was that it had no balcony or loge seating. Every seat was a floor seat, fanning out from the screen so that the Atlas had width and depth, but not necessarily height.^[5] A pair of Powers 6B projectors were installed in its operating room, which threw images onto a Minusa gold fiber screen. A Fotoplayer organ, reportedly costing $4,500, supplied the music for these early shows, though for opening day Kaida and Yamada also brought in a pair of local musicians to accompany the films. The managers initially secured film service through the Paramount, Fox, Select, Vitagraph, Pathé and Universal exchanges. Theda Bara was the initial draw in Cleopatra, a picture new to the neighborhood but not new to Seattle. Released almost a year earlier, the film already had an extended run at the Metropolitan Theatre some 10 months previous, then a second engagement over at the Rex Theatre and probably others around the city as well. Seating for opening day at the Atlas was 10 and 15 cents per person.

While the opening of the Atlas Theatre was a relatively modest one in Seattle picture circles, it was a very big deal for the residents of Chinatown. S.J. Anderson, local correspondent for Moving Picture World, dropped by and noted that the Atlas lobby boasted no fewer than 15 congratulatory floral arrangements.^[6] Some were from business associates (the H.A. Johnson Company, for example, supplier of the house’s projection equipment), but others reflected well wishes from the surrounding neighborhood: The North American Times, a Japanese newspaper operating out of Seattle, and both the Oriental-American Bank and Japanese Commercial Bank, among others. As the newest and largest entertainment venue in the area, the Atlas was determined to set itself apart from the smaller houses “down below the line,” according to Anderson. “In establishing the policy of their house, the managers are taking into consideration not only the large transient patronage which other theatres in this vicinity rely on, but the family trade from the rooming houses and hotels in the immediate neighborhood and the near-by Japanese residence district. With this in view they have made the rule that no smoking will be permitted in the house. In all other theatres below Yesler Way smoking is permitted.”^[7]

The new Atlas Theatre was a source of local pride and seems to have enjoyed ample patronage. But while the opening was an important event for area residents, it also seems to have raised concerns within the local picture business. In early 1919, about nine weeks after the Atlas opened, S.J. Anderson penned an article for Moving Picture World that centered on the growing number of Japanese entering the Seattle picture business. Kaida and Yamada were no strangers to film exhibition, but other Japanese were also buying into the movies, and at a rate that had become concerning for several of their white colleagues.

Local apprehension began to rise in mid-1918, right about the time Kaida and Yamada unloaded the Bison and began making plans to build the Atlas. That summer, over several weeks, at least 10 area picture houses went onto the market and got snapped up by Japanese buyers – in addition to the sale of the Bison and construction of the new Atlas, these transactions included the Class A, Palace, Occidental, Jackson, Flag, High Class, Victory and Electric theatres. Most of these venues were located south of Yesler Way, with the exception of the Class A, Flag and Victory, which were near Pike Street in the heart of Seattle’s shopping district. “The feeling of alarm with which the news of the purchase of theatres by Japanese was first received in Seattle film circles is gradually dying out,” Anderson reported in January 1919. “[T]en of the smaller downtown theatres are now owned and operated by members of the Nippon race who have consistently shown an attitude of fairness and honesty in their competitive methods and in their dealing with exchanges and their employees.”^[8]

This notion Anderson was reporting – that Japanese exhibitors were somehow viewed as less scrupulous than their white counterparts – was apparently a widely-held belief. It didn’t help when incidents arose that reflected poorly on the Japanese, even if those situations weren’t necessarily that unusual. In 1923 promoter S. Miyazaki brought several Japanese films to Seattle obtained from sources in Hawaii, including The Mother’s Sin and a picture called The American Family. Miyazaki booked these films into “Nippon Hall” (probably a reference to the Nippon Kan, built as a hotel in 1909 but more widely known as a theatre), where they were presented in authentic Japanese style, complete with a benshi narrator next to the screen. But while promoting this engagement, Miyazaki allegedly stated that The American Family was not suitable viewing for “Americans” – implying that his show was not for whites. That comment prompted a complaint to the Seattle Board of Censors. When the Board intervened and asked about the subject matter of The American Family, Miyazaki led them to believe that it dealt with a soldier who was sent to fight in World War I. But when censors then demanded to view the picture themselves, they discovered something different altogether – the film was centered around a powerful “love cult” that had recently made headlines in Japan. Ultimately the Board of Censors passed The American Family, but Miyazaki’s deception was not taken lightly. He was warned that any future movies he intended to screen would have to be shown, in advance, to the Board of Censors.^[9]

Most of S.J. Anderson’s 1919 article in Moving Picture World was an interview with E. Fujitomi, purchasing agent in seven of the recent theatre transactions and someone who retained an ownership stake in several of them. Fujitomi, attempting to soothe tensions within the Seattle film community, explained to Anderson he was “anxious that the trade should understand the attitude of Japanese owners.” Fujitomi explained that “‘Japanese living in Seattle want to invest their money here, but there are only three business lines open to them: truck farming, the hotel business and the motion picture business.’” He went on. “‘In entering the motion picture business we are not trying to take away from Americans as much money as possible and give nothing in return. We are interested in improving the general conditions of the business, and we want to give our employees, who are invariably Americans, a square deal.’”^[10] On the whole Fujitomi emphasized that the Japanese owners were fully cooperating in all aspects of the business, which included their dealings with local unions and exchanges.

This 1919 article was clearly designed to address whatever was going on below the surface in local film circles. Fujitomi, however, was up against a long history of Asian prejudice in Washington state. The 1848 California Gold Rush brought thousands of Chinese, almost all men, to the West Coast, many of whom stayed on to work as general laborers. Other mining booms, coupled with western railroad expansion, not only provided work for these Chinese immigrants but helped them spread to different areas. But almost wherever they settled they were forced to live separately, apart from whites, and sometimes in miserable conditions. The Chinese were tolerated for their labor, but frequently subjected to scorn and harassment.

In 1863 Washington’s Territorial Legislature passed a law assessing a “police tax” on anyone of Chinese descent who was over the age of 18, a move that ostensibly protected white workers. Later, in 1882, the federal government passed The Chinese Exclusion Act, which not only barred new Chinese labor from entering the United States for a period of 10 years but also prevented the immigrants already here from becoming U.S. citizens. The Chinese Exclusion Act was renewed for another 10 years in 1892, was made permanent in 1902, and remained on the books until World War II. Meanwhile, in 1885, shortly after original The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, Washington’s Territorial Legislature amended its 1863 law to specify that the right of land ownership was extended only to U.S. citizens, automatically excluding the Chinese and other minority groups from owning land.^[11]

These and similar measures were prompted by anti-Chinese sentiment, which occasionally spilled over into violence. In November 1885 a mob in Tacoma forcibly expelled 200 Chinese immigrants who had been told to leave the city, then burned their empty settlements to the ground. Indictments were handed down following this incident, but resulted in no convictions; instead, some in Tacoma organized a parade in the mob’s honor. Then, just three months later, Seattle forcibly expelled its own Chinese residents in a messy affair that eventually required President Grover Cleveland to call in federal troops.^[12]

With the Chinese Exclusion Act barring new immigrants from coming to the U.S., but with a continued need for cheap labor, the void was eventually filled with Japanese workers. And while the Japanese were treated better than their Chinese counterparts, at least initially, they too were forced to live separately. The Japanese ended up having a similar experience in America, with new immigrants excluded beginning in 1908, followed by a full ban on Asian immigration in 1924. “White society would not permit assimilation by the Japanese,” noted Seattle historian John Caldbick, “so immigrants created their own communities, operated their own businesses, educated their children, and created, in many places, small, prosperous, and cohesive communities embedded in a larger society that for the most part rejected them.”^[13]

Arguably the movies were a factor in stoking antagonism toward Asians. While Richard Barthelmess shot to stardom in 1919 portraying a sympathetic Chinese man in Broken Blossoms, he won praise, in part, because he played against type. Any number of early films portrayed Asians as mysterious, sinister, and prone to violence and criminality. It was not uncommon for a white screen character, for example, to be found languishing in a Chinese opium den, a plot contrivance symbolizing how far he or she had fallen. Rather than Barthelmess’ sympathetic treatment in Broken Blossoms, Americans were probably more familiar with Sessue Hayakawa’s character in 1915’s The Cheat, who famously brands a white woman in a fit of sadistic rage. By World War I movies were a popular and powerful tool of visual communication, and though Hayakawa enjoyed brief success in Hollywood, most American moviegoers only saw Asians in stereotyped, negative ways.

The fact that certain Japanese businessmen were moving into new businesses after World War I did not go unnoticed, and it was fueling a new round of anti-Asian sentiment in western Washington. When a pair of Japanese businessmen purchased the Westlake Dairy in late 1919, for example, the Seattle Star was so horrified that its sensational headline – printed above the paper’s masthead – screamed “Japs Reaching for Control of SEATTLE MILK!”^[14] Later, in the early 1920s, a group of local business owners organized the Anti-Japanese League, drawing support from members of government, the media, unions and civic institutions. Seattle also began cracking down on the issuance of business licenses to non-citizens, and in 1921 Washington state passed the Alien Land Bill, which once again restricted property ownership for non-white immigrants, and even allowed for confiscation in some situations. “‘I have waited two years for this day in court,’” noted State Senator Howard D. Taylor, speaking for passage of the Alien Land Bill. Taylor, a Republican, represented parts of south King County, agricultural communities with a large Japanese population. But he wasn’t very sympathetic to this portion of his constituency – not by a longshot. “‘No district of the state is so affected by the presence of the Japanese as mine,’” he railed. “‘…They are in possession of the farm land and have their schools where they teach antagonism to the United States. They are taking the country away from us…’”^[15]

Back in the Seattle film community, at least some of the concern around the increasing “foreign” ownership of movie theatres centered on mistrust of alleged Asian business practices. To help dispel that notion, S.J. Anderson’s interview with E. Fujitomi was augmented with comments from J.A. Koerpel, manager of the World exchange in Seattle, who supplied films to some of the houses in question. Koerpel had nothing but good things to say about his Japanese clients, in particular their willingness to show several government films being distributed through the World exchange. “Mr. Koerpel states that, with the exception of James Q. Clemmer and Joseph Danz, the only Seattle exhibitors who have booked the official pictures America’s Answer and Under Four Flags are Japanese.” Japanese owners, in fact, played these films because they felt a moral obligation to do so, Koerpel said, without “stopping to ask each time if the subjects would pay…Their experience with the war pictures justifies their business judgment…as well as showing their loyalty to the Government.”^[16]

The controversy around Japanese theatre ownership appears to have subsided by the early 1920s, or at least the issue went underground. With changes going on in the exhibition space, many of the storefront movie houses that were part of the 1918 controversy were no longer around after a few years. The Atlas Theatre remained, however, offering residents of Chinatown a steady stream of American-made movies in a venue that operated like most other suburban movie houses. Managers Kaida and Yamada were demonstrating that they were solid businessmen with good values, with a strong commitment to both community and country.

Unfortunately, as history would show, that kind of loyalty would carry the Japanese only so far.

By Eric L. Flom – November 2025

Notes:

[1] Clarence Arai to John J. Reddin, “Only Oriental Movies Seen at Theater Here,” Seattle Daily Times, 10 March 1963, Fourth Section (Local/Amusement News), Page 43.
[2] S.J. Anderson, “Notes on Washington Theatres,” Moving Picture World, 20 July 1918, Page 428. Some sources identify Iwasuke Kaida as “Kaeda” or “Kaita.” With respect to Mr. Yamada, it’s a shame that the local press and national trade papers didn’t follow his business interests – his race likely played a role in that. But according to Moving Picture World, by 1918 he had been in the Seattle exhibition field for as many as 15 years, which would make him not only one of the city’s earliest motion picture men but one of its few minority operators as well. While his early involvement in the field isn’t documented, before the opening of the Atlas he had been associated with the Bison Theatre as well as an earlier venue, the Electric, which originally opened in 1910. (S.J. Anderson, “Yamada and Kaita [sic] Open the Atlas,” Moving Picture World, 14 December 1918, Page 1225.)
[3] Ellen Kiyomizu, “Kokusai: 60 Years of Asian Films, International Examiner, Volume 7, Number 10 (October 15-November 15, 1980), Page 8.
[4] Ron Chew, My Unforgotten Seattle (Seattle: International Examiner Press – 2020), Page 111. Chew’s thoughts about being “judged” dovetails nicely with a notation that Gregory Waller points out in his book Main Street Amusements. There, when Lexington, Kentucky’s first African American picture venue, The Frolic, opened in 1907, their first (and only) newspaper advertisement implored local Blacks to “[c]ome where you are welcome and meet your friends.” (Gregory Waller, Main Street Amusements: Movies and Commercial Entertainment in a Southern City, 1896-1930 [Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press – 1995], Page 169.)
[5] Interestingly, some have interpreted the absence of a balcony at the Atlas to mean that the venue was more inclusive than other local theatres. After all, balconies had traditionally been used to keep one type of theatregoer away from another – often separating working class and/or minority groups from the more “desirable” audience members purchasing floor seats. But that may not be the case with the Atlas, as Denise Khor noted that for a brief portion of its lifetime the Atlas had a roped-off area in the auditorium separating male and female patrons – a barrier erected to grapple with increasing female participation in work and leisure activities. Douglas Gomery called this “corralling,” which was sometimes accomplished with hung curtains, and used by movie theatres without balconies to physically separate different audience groups. See Denise Khor, Asian Americans at the Movies: Race, Labor, and Migration in the Transpacific West, 1900-1945, Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation, University of California-San Diego (2008), Pages 35 and 42; and Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press – 1992), Page 158.
[6] See S.J. Anderson, “Yamada and Kaita [sic] Open the Atlas,” Moving Picture World, 7 December 1918, Page 1111; and S.J. Anderson, “Yamada and Kaita [sic] Open the Atlas,” Moving Picture World, 14 December 1918, Page 1225.
[7] S.J. Anderson, “Yamada and Kaita [sic] Open the Atlas,” Moving Picture World, 14 December 1918, Page 1225.
[8] S.J. Anderson, “Japanese Buying Smaller Theatres,” Moving Picture World, 18 January 1919, Page 332.
[9] See “Around Seattle’s Photoplay Trade Circles,” Motion Picture News, 28 April 1923, Page 2065; “This Seattle Eve Outspeeds Exhibitorial Adams, They Say,” Moving Picture World, 28 April 1923, Page 916; and “Around Seattle’s Photoplay Trade Circles,” Motion Picture News, 5 May 1923, Page 2184.
[10] S.J. Anderson, “Japanese Buying Smaller Theatres,” Moving Picture World, 18 January 1919, Page 332. Despite being more educated than other immigrant groups, Asians in early Seattle faced significant barriers to social and economic acceptance. But they excelled when given opportunities. Denise Khor, citing data compiled by Shelly Sunn Hee Lee, notes that while the Japanese were less than 3% of Seattle’s population in 1920, they owned almost one-quarter of the city’s hotels, barber shops and dye/cleaning businesses. See Denise Khor, Asian Americans at the Movies: Race, Labor, and Migration in the Transpacific West, 1900-1945 (Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation, University of California-San Diego – 2008), Pages 22 and 26-28. The business ownership statistics cited by Khor come from Shelley Sunn Hee Lee, Cosmopolitan Identities: Japanese Americans in Seattle and the Pacific Rim, 1900-1942 (PhD Dissertation, Stanford University – 2005), Page 44.
[11] See John Caldbick, “Washington Governor Louis Hart sights stringent Alien Land Bill on March 8, 1921,” HistoryLink (http://www.historylink.org/File/2124), accessed 10 March 2018.
[12] See Priscilla Long, “Tacoma expels the entire Chinese community on November 3, 1885,” HistoryLink (http://www.historylink.org/File/5063), accessed 10 March 2018; Phil Dougherty “Mobs forcibly expel most of Seattle’s Chinese residents beginning on February 7, 1886,” HistoryLink (http://www.historylink.org/File/2745), accessed 10 March 2018; and Walt Crowley, “Anti-Chinese Activism – Seattle,” HistoryLink (http://www.historylink.org/File/1057), accessed 4 February 2021.
[13] Caldbick.
[14] See “Westlake Dairy Now Japanese,” Seattle Star, 13 October 1919, Page 1.
[15] Senator Howard D. Taylor, quoted in William H. Curry, “Alien Land Bill Up to Governor,” Seattle Daily Times, 3 March 1921, Page 1; see also John Caldbick, “Washington Governor Louis Hart sights stringent Alien Land Bill on March 8, 1921,” HistoryLink (http://www.historylink.org/File/2124), accessed 10 March 2018. On top of growing concerns with Asian immigration in the early 1920s was a resurgence of Ku Klux Klan activity in the Northwest at about the same time. As scholar Michael Aronson has shown, local membership in the Klan eventually peaked at about 50,000 members, which included Seattle exhibitor John Hamrick. (See Michael Aronson, John Hamrick’s Blue Mouse Cinemas: Independent Exhibition and Influence in the Studio Era [Exeter, U.K.: University of Exeter Press – 2024], Pages 63-86.)
[16] See S.J. Anderson, “Japanese Buying Smaller Theatres,” Moving Picture World, 18 January 1919, Page 332.

Undated photo of the Atlas Theatre, Seattle. (Courtesy Cinema Treasures Website)

Undated photo of Seizabura Mukai. (Seattle Daily Times, 10 March 1963, Fourth Section, Page 43)

The Atlas on its downward programming slide, 1942. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 19 February 1942, Page 7)

1 3

The Atlas Shrugs: The Rise, Fall, Rise and Fall of Seattle’s Most Unique Theatre

Reel 3: The Setting Sun

Despite functioning like any other neighborhood movie theatre in the 1920s, the thing that always separated the Atlas from peer venues was the fact that it catered almost exclusively to minority audiences. Moreso than other theatres in Seattle, the Atlas was isolated and marginalized in ways that mirrored the patrons it served.

Suburban movie theatres tended to take on the fortunes of the surrounding neighborhood. A venue like the Uptown, opened in 1926, enjoyed all the benefits of its Queen Anne location, being situated in a traditionally affluent part of the city. A house like the Uptown could even be expected to draw patrons from other Seattle neighborhoods, depending on its programming choices. But not every theatre was that fortunate. Some were located in less prosperous neighborhoods, including those harder hit by the Depression. They may have opened to great fanfare, but over time these venues moved in tandem with the surrounding neighborhood; when their patrons struggled, so did they. These houses may not have closed down, but in some cases the audience dwindled to the point where they could no longer afford to book big Hollywood films, and instead built programs around cheap low-budget features that, in turn, attracted less discriminating audiences.

This is exactly what happened to the Atlas. After operating as a typical neighborhood movie house for most of the 1920s, gradual changes saw it move farther and farther away from its original vision. Kaida and Yamada sold the Atlas after a few years, with new management coming in and refurbishing parts of the venue in 1923. Among other changes, these new owners lifted the 1918 smoking ban, and like many other Seattle-area theatres at that time, eventually began operating the Atlas on a 24-hour schedule.

It changed ownership again, at least once, in August 1929, when it was sold to Seizabura Mukai, who would manage the venue until World War II. Like Mr. Yamada, Mukai was a longtime Japanese owner/operator in Seattle who was routinely overlooked by both local papers and the motion picture trade papers. Mukai was born in 1885 and emigrated to the United States in 1907. His experience in the picture business went as far back as 1916, when he and J. Satomi were associated with the Circuit Theatre on Second Avenue. In 1929, when he took over the Atlas, Mukai was also operating several other venues in Seattle, including the Rialto, Palace and Jackson Theatres, all located in the lower part of downtown.^[1]

Seizabura Mukai’s arrival at the Atlas Theatre came at a pivotal moment, as sound motion pictures were beginning to disrupt the movie business. But unlike some other neighborhood venues, Mukai (who Motion Picture Record described as the city’s “only Japanese exhibitor”) brought sound to the Atlas right away. “Mukai invited all the boys from Film Row down to hear his equipment last Thursday,” the Record reported in September 1929, “and we were really greatly surprised at the fine brand of reproduction that Mukai is going to be able to present his customers. We asked him if talkies in his theatre wouldn’t turn away many of his Japanese customers who did not understand English, but to our surprise he said, ‘No, they will come now more than ever to learn the correct pronunciation and usage of the English language. Just like going to school.’”^[2]

So Seizabura Mukai deftly navigated the challenge of sound pictures, but he also had to preside over the Atlas during the Depression, which weighed heavily on the theatre and the community it served. Chinatown, an isolated neighborhood of immigrants, had a large transient population that was hugely impacted when the economy went south. A source of pride when it opened in 1918, the Depression put the Atlas Theatre on a downward trajectory, where it began attracting rougher patrons, particularly at night, and gradually lost its ability to book quality films. Over time the venue ceased advertising regularly in Seattle’s daily papers, except on rare occasions, and when it did turn up in print it was usually for the wrong reasons. In February 1932 three men knifed a Filipino laborer in front of the theatre, robbing him of $18 and leaving him to bleed out on the sidewalk. Less than a month later the Atlas box office was robbed of $10 by a “sallow-complexioned” criminal; the box office would get hit multiple times over the years, in 1933, 1934 and 1946, at the very least. In September 1932 two children were injured when some lattice work fell from the ceiling in the middle of a show, sending a 12-year-old Filipino boy to the hospital. Six months later, Seizabura Mukai was cited for operating the Atlas without a valid business license. And in 1936, when a group of citizens were protesting the “immoral, lewd and suggestive performances” being given at the Rialto Theatre on First Avenue, the Atlas and another venue, the Palm, got thrown into the mix. (Because Seizabura Mukai appears to have still managed the Rialto at that time, the Palm and Atlas came under scrutiny not because of their own programming but because they were associated with Mukai.^[3])

The offscreen character of the Atlas Theatre was taking a hit, but so was its programming. Gone were the days when the venue booked second- or third-run Hollywood films; by the mid-1930s it was in B-movie territory and heading lower by the year. In 1941 the Atlas screened Wild Oats, an exploitation film “about the trials of a meek, henpecked middle-aged man who wants to look at undressed women.” The venue made no secret of the film’s sensational nature, showing the picture only to adults and advertising it as “Man’s Secret Yearnings Brought to Light!”^[4] Screen choices like Wild Oats were not all Seizabura Mukai’s fault; booking these films was less a reflection on his judgement than a sign that the venue’s original audience (the business class and family trade) was no longer attending shows. Mukai was engaged in a balancing act in which he needed to book the shows that paid, but had to do so on a miniscule budget. Films like Wild Oats may not have been what he wanted to show, but it’s what was needed to keep the business going.

Eventually Seizabura Mukai got out of movie exhibition, though not by choice. In 1942, shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, he was interned along with 120,000 other Japanese men, women and children as part of Executive Order 9066. Though Mukai originally wanted to keep the Atlas within reach, he eventually sold out to Burrell C. Johnson.^[5] Seizabura Mukai, his wife and five children were sent to an internment camp in Montana, and after the war settled into potato farming near Moses Lake. Mukai eventually returned to Seattle but never resumed management of the Atlas, passing away in the 1950s. In his final years Mukai’s only connection to the venue that was, essentially, taken from him, was the $300 a month he allegedly received from Burrell Johnson.^[6]

Johnson ran the Atlas from 1942 to 1960, but new management was dealing with the same old problems. A surprise fire inspection in December 1942 resulted in the manager’s arrest, conviction and sentencing to 30 days in jail, although the jailtime was suspended because Johnson quickly addressed the venue’s safety issues. News reports didn’t specify the problem at the Atlas, but Seattle officials were cracking down on nightclubs and all-night theatres following a deadly fire in Boston. The Atlas’ infraction may have been due to blocked exits and/or the presence of flammable materials – overcrowding, at this point in its history, was probably not the issue. In January 1944 police raided the theatre at 5:00 a.m. after employees called the cops on a group of men who paid their admission, then used the theatre as a flophouse for the night. The men were rousted and sent into the street, though not before several were detained so their draft status could be investigated or because they possessed knives and other illicit materials. One man, a 19-year-old African American, was sentenced to 10 days in jail following the roundup; dishonorably discharged from the Navy, he was detained at the Atlas while still wearing part of his old uniform. Coupled with a prior arrest for auto theft, that ensured that the young man would get jail time.

That wouldn’t be the last time patrons bunked down at the all-night Atlas, by any means. In July 1946 a pair of men reported that unknown thief cut open their pockets while they slept at the theatre. (Total loss: a set of keys and two wallets with no money.) It happened again two months later, in September, when an Atlas patron lost $35 in cash and a diamond stickpin valued at $750 after being awakened to find a pair of men robbing him as he slept. These robbers, who successfully fled the theatre, managed to get the man’s wallet by cutting a hole in his back pocket with a pair of scissors, until they were noticed at the last second.^[7]

Such incidents just kept repeating themselves. At one time the Atlas reflected the aspirations of Chinatown’s residents, but 30 years later it was run down, dark and decrepit, attracting a rough and largely male clientele. Its reputation wasn’t helped by its proximity to the Basin Street Club, an after-hours spot that was frequently a target for police and liquor control agents. Much of the block was suspect, in fact, though it wasn’t solely the Atlas, their programming or their clientele that was causing problems.

It’s not fair to pin all the Atlas’ woes on Burrell Johnson – like Seizabura Mukai before him, he operated on thin margins in a rough part of Seattle. Nonetheless, the community that once embraced the Atlas as a giant leap forward was now lining up against the venue as a place that “promoted” crime – including loitering, theft, drinking, fistfights and the occasional bust for prostitution. “‘It’s a difficult theatre to run – perhaps the hardest in the whole city,’” Johnson told the Jackson Street Community Council in 1950. “‘I’m trying to do the best I can.’”^[8] To that end Johnson closed the Atlas for a remodel, but even with a facelift it barely hobbled through the 1950s – suffering from, among other things, suburban flight and the negative impact of television, which was cutting into the business of movie theatres across the country. There were some bright spots. For several years Johnson and the Atlas hosted an annual Christmas party for local elderly residents, a kindly gesture that built goodwill within the community but didn’t necessarily revitalize the business or fix the venue’s tarnished reputation.^[9]

The clock was ticking on the Atlas. By the 1950s the closure of Seattle’s old silent-era movie houses was in full swing, even in the city’s more prosperous neighborhoods. Given its location and recent history, it was going to take a miracle for the Atlas to survive.

By Eric L. Flom – November 2025

Notes:

[1] See “Newsy Shorts of the Week,” Motion Picture Record, 10 August 1929 (Vol. 6, No. 32), Page 3; and “His Deeds Dark as Complexion,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7 December 1926, Page 13.
[2] Seizabura Mukai, as quoted in “Seattle,” Motion Picture Record, 14 September 1929 (Vol. 6, No. 37), Page 3.
[3] See “Man Robbed and Knifed in Back; Condition Serious,” Seattle Daily Times, 4 February 1932, Page 4; “Sallow Bandit Robs Atlas Theatre,” Seattle Daily Times, 24 February 1932, Page 4; “Theatre Held Up by Bold Bandit,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 24 February 1932, Page 1; “Boy Injured in Theatre When Lattice Falls,” Seattle Daily Times, 15 September 1932, Page 7; “2 Boys Hurt by Falling Screen,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 15 September 1932, Page 2; “Three Theatres Denied Licenses,” Seattle Daily Times, 25 April 1933, Page 8; “Theatre Operators Get Tip on Licensees,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 25 April 1933, Page 11; “Girl Cashier Identifies Man as Thug,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 29 November 1933, Page 3; “Council Closes Up Risqué Show,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 9 June 1936, Page 3; and “Three Robbed in South End,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 28 July 1946, Page 7. In fairness, the Atlas was one of several local theatres – including downtown venues such as the Winter Garden and Colonial – that were fined in early 1933 for operating with an expired license.
[4] See Wild Oats (1940), Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159831/?ref_=fn_al_tt_5), accessed 4 February 2016; and Atlas Theatre advertisement, Seattle Daily Times, 12 November 1941, Page 18.
[5] See Richard E. Hays, “Along Film Row,” Seattle Daily Times, 25 February 1942, Page 18.
[6] See Paul Dorpat, “Seattle Now and Then: The Atlas Theatre,” http://pauldorpat.com/2012/12/08/seattle-now-then-the-atlas-theatre/, accessed 20 January 2016; and John J. Reddin, “Only Oriental Movies Seen at Theater Here,” Seattle Daily Times, 10 March 1963, Fourth Section (Local/Amusement News), Page 43.
[7] See “4 Accused of Fire Hazards,” Seattle Daily Times, 4 December 1942, Page 34; Carl L. Cooper, “2 Arrested in Drive on Fire Hazards,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4 December 1942, Pages 1 and 8; Carl L. Cooper, “Two Convicted in Campaign on Fire Menaces,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5 December 1942, Page 5; “Police Rout Slumberers from Theatre,” Seattle Daily Times, 3 January 1944, Page 8; “20 Men Taken in Checkup on Draft,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4 January 1944, Page 7; “Uniform Parts Wearer Jailed,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7 January 1944, Page 9; “Pocket Thief,” Seattle Daily Times, 9 July 1946, Page 13; “Pant-Splitting Thief Gets Empty Wallets, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 10 July 1946, Page 13; and “Quiet Nap in Theater Costs $785,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 22 September 1946, Page 7.
[8] Burrell C. Johnson, as quoted in “Council Group Warns Theatre,” Seattle Daily Times, 3 January 1950, Page 11; see also Richard E. Hays, “Along Film Row,” Seattle Daily Times, 3 March 1950, Page 28.
[9] See “Christmas 3 Days Early for 400 from Skid Road,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 23 December 1956, Page 60; and “Jackson Street ‘Oldsters’ To Hold Annual Yule Party Saturday,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 15 December 1957, Page 56. Burrell C. Johnson did not organize these parties, which were the work of another local organization – he merely provided the host venue.

Tadao Kitamura and Burrell Johnson at the Kokusai, 1963 (Seattle Times, 10 March 1963. Fourth Section, Page 43)

Early Kokusai advertisement from 1962. (Seattle Daily Times, 23 March 1962, Page 16)

Kokusai print ad from 1965. (Seattle Daily Times, 20 August 1965, Page 12)

Undated photo of the Kitamura family at the Kokusai Theatre. (Courtesy Internatinal Examiner)

1 4

The Atlas Shrugs: The Rise, Fall, Rise and Fall of Seattle’s Most Unique Theatre

Reel 4: Renewed and Reimagined

By 1960 Burrell Johnson had done about all he could do with the Atlas. But rather than shutter it for good, he was lucky enough to find a buyer – Tadao Kitamura. Kitamura was a Chinatown resident who had been dabbling in small-time movie exhibition for years, screening imported films at a local Buddhist church and giving occasional shows at the Ship Ahoy Café, among other places.^[1] The Atlas was Kitamura’s first attempt at running an actual movie theatre, and his first order of business was an unusual one: he took the traditional playbook and threw it out the window. For Tadao Kitamura, the Atlas wasn’t just a theatre – it was an opportunity to bring the Chinatown community closer together through motion picture entertainment. To that end he took the Atlas’ entire history, the good and the bad, and set it off to the side. He was going to take the venue in an entirely new direction, one that would, over time, restore its reputation and cement its legacy in Seattle film history.

Tadao Kitamura was a Kibei – born in the United States (April 1, 1919, in Bellingham), but educated in Japan, at least some of that in the city of Hikone.^[2] He returned to the United States in May 1936, at age 17, coming from Yokohama on the ship Heian Maru. He settled into the Chinatown neighborhood and worked a variety of kitchen jobs until August of 1942, when he and thousands of other local Japanese were rounded up and interned in accordance with Executive Order 9066. Tadao was sent to Camp Harmony, the temporary holding quarters for Japanese citizens constructed on and around the Western Washington Fairgrounds in Puyallup. This was a temporary stop before being transferred to the Minidoka Camp in Jerome, Idaho, where he lived until August 1945.

After the war Tadao Kitamura pursued his passion of becoming a chef, even going to New York study the craft, though he had already developed a parallel interest in motion pictures. This may not have been new, given his family; the details aren’t entirely clear, but Kitamura’s father Chutaro may have had some sort of connection to the Japanese film industry. When Tadao was interned in 1942, his primary occupation was listed as a restaurant worker, but his secondary occupation was as a “semiskilled motion picture projectionists [sic].”^[3] (For the record Chutaro’s occupations, also listed on Tadao’s internment paperwork, made no mention of any motion picture experience. He was listed a skilled craftsman with experience in farming operations.)

After his brief stay in New York, Tadao Kitamura returned to Seattle and went back into the restaurant business, eventually marrying Mitsuye Tanaka on November 27, 1951. Mitsuye was nine years his junior. Like Tadao she was a Kibei, born in Kent but educated in Japan, where she lived through the end of World War II. Mitsuye eventually returned to the United States, and after getting married the Kitamuras settled down and started a family. They would eventually have four children – Lance, Elaine, Darrell and Zen.

Despite a new marriage, a growing family and more responsibility, Tadao continued to indulge his interest in film, and by the mid-1950s had a side hustle exhibiting Japanese pictures in various rented locations. When he took over the Atlas Theatre in 1960 it was both an opportunity to pursue his passion and to further the connection between himself, his community and his Japanese homeland. “I think his interest [in movies] was because we were Japanese,” daughter Elaine remembered, “[and] we wanted to worship and treasure the language and culture…”^[4]

Kitamura started by refurbishing the Atlas from top to bottom, and by giving it a new name – the Kokusai, the Japanese word for “international.” According to Seattle Times columnist John Reddin, who visited the “much-maligned little theater” in 1963, the Kokusai’s modest exterior now hid an interior filled with “exotic Buddhas, bonsai trees, samurai swords, costumed Japanese dolls and other Oriental statuary,” creating an atmosphere that invoked “a bit of old Kyoto lifted intact and put down in the heart of Chinatown.”^[5] This change was transformative, breathing new life into the old theatre and better aligning it with the community it served. In this sense, the Kokusai fit the neighborhood like a glove. “Some shop owners still used abacuses instead of cash registers [in the 1960s],” remembered Ron Chew. “I watched their deft fingers slide quickly and lightly across the clacking beads. My mother wrangled over prices, trying to squeeze out the best deal. Transactions were handled in cash. My father and mother didn’t have checkbooks or credit cards. Receipts were written with fountain pens dipped in inkwells.”^[6]

Tadao Kitamura transformed more than just the look and feel of the Kokusai. A modern Cinemascope screen was installed, and ticket prices were raised to cater to an entirely different type of moviegoer. Kitamura also enhanced the cultural experience by operating a restaurant/tearoom, the Raku, in the space next to the Kokusai – a Shibai tradition that was a throwback to the old picture houses of Japan. But nowhere were the changes at the Kokusai more evident than in its programming. For its lifetime the venue had only shown American-made films. But once Kitamura took over, those were out. He only wanted to show Asian films, making the Kokusai, at the time, one of only a handful of theatres in the United States dedicated to showing Asian cinema. He was ahead of the curve; eventually a tiny circuit of theatres emerged, most centered around the Asian communities along the West Coast. “‘The entire International community is proud of our Kokusai Theatre,’” attorney Clarence Arai told John Reddin in 1963. “‘[Tadao] kicked the winos out and made it into a family theater, neat and clean and usually playing to a full house.’”^[7]

Kitamura’s screening policy was to show Chinese features on Monday and Tuesday, Filipino pictures (often in the Tagalog dialect) on Wednesday and Thursday, then Japanese features on Friday through Sunday.^[8] Eventually the Kokusai dropped the Thursday screenings, but for years the venue opened in the late afternoon and ran until 11 p.m. or midnight. There were even a few nights when the venue stayed open into the wee hours of the morning, which they did so nearby restaurant workers could attend shows after their closing shifts. The Kokusai’s only matinee screening was on Sunday afternoon. Most Japanese programs, at least, were double features. Kitamura tried to pair films that were new to the venue with an older picture that had already played before, ideally when they had some sort of link (theme, director, performer, etc.). Most pictures weren’t subtitled, but a few were – not that it really helped. In one such film, when the male lead turned to the heroine and warned her to “be careful,” the line ended up being translated as “your single walking is prohibited.”^[9]

Tadao Kitamura took an unusual approach to operating the Kokusai Theatre. In most neighborhood venues the manager had an active hand in booking and advertising, and that was true at the Kokusai, at least with respect to their Japanese offerings. For these, Tadao and Mitsuye collaborated on selecting and booking films, with Mitsuye handing the scheduling and shipping details for film prints. She also handled the advertising for these shows, which were typically promoted using flyers distributed at the theatre and by hanging programs or posters in local businesses. For the most part Tadao outsourced the programming of Chinese and Filipino films to others, who not only selected the pictures but were responsible for promoting those engagements within their own communities. With the Kokusai’s Japanese programming the Kitamuras took on every aspect showing these films and reaped the financial gain of these shows. For their Chinese and Filipino movies, they simply rented out the venue and took a portion of the box office receipts, the remainder going to the program organizers.

In a way, Tadao Kitamura’s business model was to organize a miniature Asian film festival every single week; “‘[w]e were multicultural before it was cool,’” daughter Elaine once quipped.^[10] Tadao’s programming choices were geared to serve the entertainment needs of the greater Chinatown community, but unconsciously he was tapping into a new movie culture in the 1960s. The house was designed to serve the neighborhood, but over time the shows (particularly the Japanese films) started attracting white audiences as well, especially when the Kokusai booked samurai-themed movies. Kitamura also found success with Japanese chambara films; set in historical Japan, these features had a familiar ring for American viewers. “‘I think you could say that the chambara were the first of the horse operas,’” he told a reporter in 1961. “‘The structure is almost exactly the same as that of the western turkeys you see on teevee today.’”^[11] This was a complete surprise – the Kokusai didn’t advertise outside of Chinatown, and was mentioned in Seattle newspapers only occasionally. “White audiences came from nowhere,” Elaine recalled, unable to explain how they crossed cultural barriers without even trying. The Chinese and Filipino nights, as well, had their own specific film genres that were also quite popular. As a boy Ron Chew, of Chinese descent, came down from his Beacon Hill home on occasion to see Cantonese opera, but he much preferred trips to the Kokusai where his mother went to see their Chinese films. “I marveled at the martial arts and supernatural ghosts flying through the air,” Chew recalled. “I didn’t care for the violent sword-play and the brutality of severed limbs and heads. There were moments when I had to close my eyes and turn away. My mother hated the violence as well. She came for the romantic stories of separation and heartbreak, the epic tales of devotion, and the heroic stories of uprisings against tyrannical rulers. She arrived with a full box of napkins in her purse, readying herself for cathartic crying sessions.”^[12]

At the time, seeing a film at the Kokusai was an experience unlike any other. At the Chinese pictures that Chew attended, he vividly recalled his mother bringing sacks of ga ghee (Chinese watermelon seeds) and chicken wings into the venue, and she was not alone in that practice. The crunching of seeds could be heard all over the theatre, to the point where it was mildly distracting, while other patrons dug through their own homemade concessions, the remnants of everything ending up on the floor. “I felt sorry for the people who had to clean up,” said Chew. (That clean-up crew was the Kitamura family, who had the task of scrubbing the auditorium floor to remove debris that didn’t easily sweep up. “It was a mess,” Elaine remembered, “a complete mess.”^[13])

There were even differences from night-to-night at the Kokusai, depending on the type of films being screened. In 1961 Tadao Kitamura claimed he couldn’t make enough popcorn when showing Filipino or Japanese pictures, but at Chinese screenings he didn’t even bother turning the machine on.^[14] (Ron Chew explained that the core audience at the shows he attended was Chinese women who were relatively new of America, so popcorn would have been an unfamiliar snack. Filipino and Japanese patrons, many of whom had grown up in and around American military bases in their homelands, were more attuned to this time-honored movie ritual.) The venue itself sold popcorn and American candy, as well as soda; because the Kokusai never had an ice machine, the drinks were served at room temperature. Sometimes street vendors parked outside the Kokusai to take advantage of their shows. Elaine Kitamura recalled that on Filipino nights it wasn’t uncommon for someone to sell lumpia and other quick foods on the street, which patrons would then bring into the theatre. Tadao Kitamura had no hand in organizing these street vendors, but he also didn’t discourage them and never charged anyone for setting up shop. For him it was part of the cultural experience – his goal was to bring authentic Asian cinema to the people of Chinatown, and the food vendors played right into that vision.^[15]

Kitamura ran his theatre like he ran his family. The Kitamuras were prim, proper and private, but Tadao could be strict – as a Kibei, he wanted everything traditional and orderly. The Kitamuras observed all Japanese festivals and holidays. They could speak English outside the family home, when they had to, but inside they spoke only Japanese. This was also true at the Kokusai, particularly during the weekend shows – Tadao insisted that Japanese patrons were only to be addressed in Japanese, and that all Japanese customs should be observed. Everyone in the Kitamura family had to be on their best behavior at all times. As a prominent family in Chinatown, this was something of a double-edged sword for the kids. On the one hand everyone knew who they were, so they were greeted warmly wherever they went and shown a great deal of respect. On the other they were always being watched, since their public behavior reflected on the family name. There were no youthful hijinks of any kind – no one wanted to run afoul of Tadao or Mitsuye by doing something that reflected poorly on the family.

When the kids were young, and from time to time thereafter, Tadao employed others to help run the Kokusai, but once his children were old enough they graduated into the family business, working evenings and weekends for years. (Zen, the youngest, managed to avoid conscripted service.) In fact, the Kokusai was mostly run by the Kitamura family with no outside employees, except for the house projectionist – a setup used at thousands of small movie venues across North America during the silent era and beyond. “I was the cashier,” Elaine remembered, “and [my father] wouldn’t allow me to use a calculator to do the calculations of how many adults, kids and stuff, so I had to do everything by hand to figure out the total cost…I’m sure he lost money because I wasn’t very good at math!”^[16] This was part of Tadao’s teaching method – Elaine needed to learn how to do the calculations in her head. (And she did, but only after creating cheat sheets to help with the adding.) Sometimes he could be difficult, but it was only because Tadao took such pride in the Kokusai that he considered the theatre an extension of himself and his family.

But if there was one thing that Elaine remembered vividly about her father, it was his steadfast commitment to the Chinatown community. If the family ate at a restaurant, it was local; if they needed an item, they bought it from a neighborhood merchant. But being a member of the community meant much more than just patronizing local businesses. Tadao would never just buy an item and leave – he made a point to talk with the shopkeepers and staff, to know their family and friends by name, and to stay connected. Sometimes he dragged the children into stores just to make a social call on the owner. These conversations might run for an hour or more, and the kids were obligated to stand at his side and remain engaged. This was also part of their training, both in how to converse with adults but also in how to interact with the broader community. Tadao Kitamura wasn’t unusual in this sense, because this was how things were done in Chinatown. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone supported everyone. He regularly patronized neighborhood businesses, and in turn those people went to the Kokusai to support his. Privately, daughter Elaine liked to refer to her father as the unofficial “mayor” of Chinatown, and she wasn’t joking – Tadao took the time to know people, their businesses, their families, and their concerns, and those were all very important to him.

Thanks to the hard-working Kitamura family, the problems that once hounded the old Atlas Theatre were completely forgotten in a matter of years. Tadao had tapped into something special. Using the Kokusai as a vehicle, he was building a community within his own community.

It was a good formula, and one that was eventually copied. In 1971 the Kokusai Theatre was joined by the Toyo, a venue known previously as the American and the Beaux Arts, which also began programming Asian films. That venue, located outside Chinatown on Rainier Avenue South, was run by the father/son team of John and Terry Nakano. Together with some smaller venues that cropped up in and around the area, by the 1970s Seattle had a miniature circuit of movie houses specializing in Asian cinema. But, despite their similarity, the Kokusai and Toyo, at least, differed in their programming choices. The Kokusai was more likely to show older films and classics, although they also had to evolve with the Asian film market. “[Ken Wong, Kokusai projectionist] says the most popular films for years involved wild swordsman battles, but now fistfights – kung fu – are the rage,” it was observed in 1974.^[17] While the Toyo also showed these types of pictures, they were more likely to book newer releases that appealed to younger audiences. Either way, this was cinema that was skewed toward a narrow portion of the moviegoing public, so the margins at both venues were tight. And the pickings could be slim, because in the early 1970s a single Asian film print often had to travel from house to house along the West Coast. Some of these were less than pristine by the time they got to Seattle – scratched and patched, many of them arrived looking rough around the edges. But audiences at both venues didn’t seem to mind.

The Kokusai Theatre enjoyed a good 15-year run before the venue started running into challenges. Foremost was Tadao Kitamura’s death on February 11, 1976. He spearheaded the venue’s reemergence as a popular movie house and served as the face of the business; Tadao’s loss was a devastating blow not only to his family but to the entire community. Even so, there was never a question of whether the Kokusai would continue. The theatre had been, for most of its existence, a family-run business, with few (and sometimes no) other employees. The best way to honor Tadao’s memory was to continue serving the people of Chinatown, just as they always had.

It fell to Lance, the eldest Kitamura son, to take the lead. Both Lance and Elaine were students at the University of Washington at the time, but they dropped out and came back to the Kokusai on a full-time basis. Elaine would eventually return and earn a communications degree, but Lance gave up his studies to ensure the theatre would continue operating. Warm and personable, Lance was now the face of the venue, greeting customers and running the house projectors, something he did with the help of younger brother Darrell, who also split time with Elaine in the box-office. The Kokusai’s secret weapon, however, had always been Mitsuye Kitamura. Tadao was the name above the title, and the success of his theatre a reflection of his vision and hard work. But like so many exhibitor wives before her, Mitsuye was always there, behind the scenes, ensuring the trains ran on time, booking the house’s Japanese features and coordinating their promotion, but now with help from daughter Elaine. From the outside the Kokusai had passed from father to son, but it was a façade that hid the critical role that Mitsuye continued to play even after her husband passed. At all times, however, she stayed in the background, taking no credit for her role, substantial though it was. “She was so private,” Elaine said of her mother. “People didn’t even know she was behind the scenes running around because they thought Tadao was doing it. Yes, he was, but you know what, my dad couldn’t have done it without her. She was in the background making things happen.”^[18]

With Tadao gone, work at the Kokusai became even more of a family affair, since they came together to ensure the business continued. Even after Elaine got older and had her own full-time job, it wasn’t uncommon for her to work a full day, then run down to the Kokusai to help out.^[19] After so many years, she had gotten used to the family tradition of taking meals in shifts. When everyone was at the theatre, two of them would run out to a nearby restaurant, order food and eat, then get up and rush back to the Kokusai, leaving the table awash in unfinished plates. But staff at these local restaurants knew the Kitamura family and their routine, so nothing was cleared away. Once the first two got back to the theatre, the next two would run out and slip into the same booth, and meal would continue, and it would keep on going until everyone had finished eating. The restaurants frequented by the Kitamuras also served as banks when the Kokusai ran short on change, which sometimes occurred at odd hours. One of the kids, usually Elaine, would run out to a local eatery to trade dollar bills for smaller denominations or coins, as needed.

So, despite Tadao Kitamura’s death, the Kokusai kept right on running. And the Kitamuras were fully equipped to do that, except that outside forces in the mid-70s were making things more and more difficult. One issue was the demographics of their core audience. For the Japanese films that the Kitamuras programmed, most of the audience had been Issei and Nisei Japanese. (Issei were born in Japan but emigrated to the United States; Nisei were the American-born children of Issei parents.) This was also true of their Chinese and Filipino audiences – the Kokusai programming was skewed toward an older generation, some of whom could no longer attend the venue on a regular basis. Elaine, in fact, remembered that it wasn’t uncommon in the late 70s and early 80s to see adult children drop off their elderly parents at the Kokusai, only to return and pick them up after the show – a reversal of the modern-day parent who drops the kids off at the local cineplex for a Saturday matinee. More often than not, however, as these folks continued aging, they came to the Kokusai with less and less frequency.

The changing times had an impact on theatre attendance in other ways. When the Kingdome opened in 1976 as the home of the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Mariners, its location a short distance away changed the nature of Chinatown. For the Kokusai and surrounding businesses, the added congestion took away parking spaces that regular patrons used when shopping, eating or attending shows. The theatre responded in the only way it could, by giving away parking tokens for the new pay lots that had sprouted up throughout the neighborhood. Patrons could pull up in front of the venue, jump out and grab free token from the box office, then park and return to the Kokusai for a show. But this was a costly solution to the parking problem, and no doubt the theatre was scammed by people who asked for tokens with no intention of returning. But the Kokusai had few choices – if it didn’t make theatregoing easy, people would stop coming. This same thing was occurring all across Chinatown; while the Kingdome brought new business to area restaurants and bars, the traffic and parking situation also made it harder for people to patronize local merchants.

Changes in the Asian entertainment industry, as well, were adding to the Kokusai’s woes. For the house’s Japanese films, there were fewer and fewer movies available to book by the 1980s. “‘Business is fair-to-middling right now,’” Lance Kitamura told the Seattle Times in 1981. “‘I wish there were more new films, but Japan produces only 10 to 20 Class A movies a year now. Most of the studios are going into television.’”^[20] Still, the Kitamuras remained committed to fighting the good fight. “‘…[I]t would be difficult to give [the Kokusai] up,’” Lance said a year earlier, “‘partly because of ties to family tradition and business and because it serves a need in the community, be it entertainment or a social purpose.’”^[21]

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a battle they were going to win. The Kokusai Theatre, formerly the Atlas, finally shut its doors in the early 1980s. Even if they bridged the generation gap, even if they navigated the parking and congestion issues, even if the state of Asian filmmaking changed in their favor, there was still one obstacle they couldn’t surmount: the exploding home video market. Many Asian films, the very ones that venues like the Kokusai and Toyo would have shown on their screens, were becoming readily available for home consumption, and could often be bought or rented from shops throughout Chinatown, soon to be renamed the International District. The times were changing and older, single screen theatres like the Kokusai didn’t have good answers. Despite the brave public face, eventually the Kitamuras recognized that the family business had run its course. “We were so proud of that theatre and hated to give it up,” Elaine recalled 40 years later, “but the kids [were older and] had to develop their careers. [The Kokusai] wasn’t going to go any further…we had a good run and couldn’t see how [the situation] could get better.”^[22] Following Tadao Kitamura’s death, the family continued running the Kokusai in his memory, but now it was time. Better to bow out on a high note than preside over a struggling venue, as Seizabura Mukai and Burrell Johnson had done with the old Atlas. The Kitamura family provided a service to the residents of Chinatown for nearly a quarter century – far and away the theatre’s best years. For them, and for the old picture house itself, it was time for the next chapter.

By Eric L. Flom – November 2025

Notes:

[1] See Frank Lynch, “Meet the Hon. Marilyn Monroe of Japan,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 15 March 1955, Page 6.
[2] See “U.S., Japanese Americans Relocated During World War II, 1942-1946 (Tadao Kitamura),” Ancestry.com (https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=8918&h=24226&tid=&pid=&queryId=367b056d30f4e4b244fdb9671437eafe&usePUB=true&_phsrc=lIU47&_phstart=successSource), accessed 16 January 2022.
[3] See “U.S., Japanese Americans Relocated During World War II, 1942-1946 (Tadao Kitamura),” Ancestry.com (https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=8918&h=24226&tid=&pid=&queryId=367b056d30f4e4b244fdb9671437eafe&usePUB=true&_phsrc=lIU47&_phstart=successSource), accessed 16 January 2022.
[4] Elaine Kitamura interview with Eric L. Flom, 7 March 2021.
[5] John J. Reddin, “Only Oriental Movies Seen at Theater Here,” Seattle Daily Times, 10 March 1963, Fourth Section (Local/Amusement News), Page 43.
[6] Ron Chew, My Unforgotten Seattle (Seattle: International Examiner Press – 2020), Page 112.
[7] John J. Reddin, “Only Oriental Movies Seen at Theater Here,” Seattle Daily Times, 10 March 1963, Fourth Section (Local/Amusement News), Page 43.
[8] See Frank Lynch, “A Japanese Horse Opera in the Movies,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7 March 1961, Page 8; and John J. Reddin, “Only Oriental Movies Seen at Theater Here,” Seattle Daily Times, 10 March 1963, Fourth Section (Local/Amusement News), Page 43.
[9] Emmett Watson, “This Our City,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 27 March 1964, Page 17.
[10] Elaine Kitamura, as quoted in David Yamaguchi, “Growing up at the Kokusai Theater,” Discover Nikkei (http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/jounral/2016/6/14/Kokusai-theater/), accessed 7 February 2021.
[11] Tadao Kitamura as quoted in Frank Lynch, “A Japanese Horse Opera in the Movies,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7 March 1961, Page 8.
[12] Ron Chew, My Unforgotten Seattle (Seattle: International Examiner Press – 2020), Page 115.
[13] Elaine Kitamura interview with Eric L. Flom, 9 January 2022.
[14] See Frank Lynch, “A Japanese Horse Opera in the Movies,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7 March 1961, Page 8; and Ron Chew interview with Eric L. Flom, 5 February 2021.
[15] Kitamura interview, 7 March 2021.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ken Wong to Dick Young, as quoted in “Kokusai Theater – Truly International,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 23 January 1974, Page C16.
[18] Kitamura interview, 9 January 2022.
[19] Kitamura interview, 7 March 2021.
[20] John Hartl, “Two Seattle Theaters Present Wide Range of Japanese Movies, Seattle Times, 29 October 1981, Page 50.
[21] Ellen Kiyomizu, “Kokusai: 60 Years of Asian Films, International Examiner, Volume 7, Number 10 (October 15-November 15, 1980), Page 8.
[22] Kitamura interview, 9 January 2022.

Updated Kokusai marquee, ca. 1973. (Seattle Daily Times, 24 June 1973, Sunday Pictoral Section, Page 13)

Kokusai Theatre program. (Courtesy Wing Luke Museum)

The Toyo Theatre in Seattle, July 1986 (Courtesy Museum of History and Industry, Image No. Lib1993.41.1.1.9.2)

Japanese actress Yoshiko Mita at the Nippon Kan Theatre, Seattle, February 1979. (Courtesy Museum of History and Industry, Image No. 2000.107.098.19.03)

1 4

The Atlas Shrugs: The Rise, Fall, Rise and Fall of Seattle’s Most Unique Theatre

Reel 5: Twilight

So the Kokusai closed its doors, but it didn’t disappear from the landscape. It never again showed motion pictures, but the front portion of the venue was adapted into a variety of small businesses, primarily restaurants. Behind those establishments, however, the auditorium stood empty, seats intact, waiting for the possibility of a third lease on life. But this time there was no lifesaver like Tadao Kitamura to take the reigns, and eventually the years of neglect caught up with the building.

Bought from the Kitamura family in 1989 by George Lui and Assunta Ng, the structure plodded along until the afternoon of February 10, 1997, when a pair of wood trusses over the auditorium gave way after years of weather damage.^[1] Two restaurants occupied the building at the time – one was closed when the accident occurred, but the other was in the middle of the lunch rush. Thankfully the damage was confined to the back portion of the building, so no one was hurt.

The day before, on February 9^th, Sam Ung, owner of the Phnom Penh Noodle House, the restaurant open at the time of the collapse, noticed something odd when taking out some trash. The back wall of the Kokusai appeared to be buckling, the brickwork twisted in a way he hadn’t noticed before. He wasn’t the only one who spotted the problem. The property manager for the Evergreen Apartments next door observed the same thing, then alerted tenants and businesses in their building to the situation. George Lui was contacted and came to inspect the scene, then arranged for a contractor to come out to assess the situation. But the trusses gave way before the contactor arrived, spilling debris in the alleyway and closing several nearby businesses. (The Wing Luke Museum, for example, had to close for two weeks because brick and woodwork from the old Kokusai blocked one of their fire exits.) Local media descended on the International District, with several reaching out to the Kitamura family for comment. But the Kitamuras didn’t want to inject themselves into the situation. When she learned of the collapse, Elaine remembered feeling great concern for anyone that may have been hurt – that weighed on her more than the fact that her family once owned the building. Mitsuye Kitamura, on the other hand, was devastated; the Kokusai had been such an important part of her life. But the family turned away media requests, asking instead for privacy.^[2]

An investigation into the collapse revealed a flaw in Seattle’s building inspection process. In 1997 commercial buildings deemed “low hazard” were required to be inspected every two years, and the Kokusai had passed its most recent inspection. However, the city officials who conducted that review only inspected the front portion of the building, where the commercial operations were located – the auditorium space was only given a cursory review. Once the Kokusai had ceased to be an active movie theatre, almost all the subsequent renovations had been made to the old lobby area, leaving the back portion (with its older walls and flat roof) largely untouched. Seattle’s Department of Construction and Land Use later determined that the truss gave way due to weather exposure – damage exacerbated by heavy snowfall and rain that occurred a few months previous. (A minor earthquake in the summer of 1996 probably didn’t help.) When it finally caved in, the Kokusai roof fell largely onto the old stage area, taking out several rows of theatre seating in the process, as well as spilling into the back alley.^[3]

The city of Seattle gave George Lui and Assunta Ng 48 hours to shore up the building, but realistically the fate of the Kokusai was already sealed. Area residents voiced safety concerns, not only from further collapse but also from the asbestos used to construct the building way back in 1918. “‘Our child has been coughing at night ever since the building collapsed, and there’s black stuff coming out of his nose,’” complained one woman who lived in Evergreen Apartments next door. Older folks living near the building also claimed to have breathing difficulties after the collapse. To address health concerns Lu and Ng arranged for the site to be tested for both asbestos and lead, while plans for demolition were made.^[4] When TLH Demolition came to inspect the job, they speculated that the Kokusai – equal parts treasure and eyesore during its 80-year history – could be razed in a week. And so, within days of the collapse, this piece of Seattle history simply disappeared. A new multi-story structure was eventually put up in its place.^[5]

Nonetheless, memories of the Kokusai remained. On the Cinema Treasures website, a contributor posting under the name “Paghat” remembered how the venue left its seedy past behind and became an oasis in the International District. “In the 1960s and 1970s the Kokusai was very run down because it did not have enough business anymore to afford repairs,” Paghat recalled. “It was showing aged film prints, many of the color films washed out to pink, and the projectors frequently broke down but a patient audience would await repairs, or in some cases wait for reels to be changed on the same projector if one of them needed new parts…When there were more Issei (first generation Japanese Americans) in Seattle, the Kokusai was always well attended by people nostalgic to hear their language and see their history played out in samurai films and the like. But as that generation died or became less ambulatory, the newer generation did not speak Japanese and felt much less nostalgia for more than going to the films with grandma. The audience was vanishing.”^[6]

The death of the Atlas/Kokusai was a watershed moment for Paghat, who frequented the venue (as well as the Toyo on Rainier Avenue South) for almost 10 years during an important period in his life. When the roof of the old theatre collapsed, “for me personally it is a loss that can bring me to tears if I dare think too long about it.”

To me it was a dreamy, dreamy, wonderful cinema because I could see two Japanese movies each week, then the next night at Toyo Cinema down Rainier Avenue I’d see two more, so for over a decade I was watching four Japanese movies per week not counting what could be found in [W]hite theaters or campus film programs (not the mention all the Chinese films I could see around town). Thousands of Japanese movies I got to see, and the DVD revolution has not yet reduplicated that possibility even for the small screen; certainly no one will ever have that opportunity to see so many Japanese films on a big screen ever again in America. I was absolutely steeped in samurai ethos and it shaped my young life as a martial artist, then as a novelist, and even affected by diet and the clothes I wore. I would not be the same human being without Kokusai Theater.^[7]

In 2016 David Yamaguchi, a journalist with The North American Post, observed that members of his community still retained a strong attachment to the old theatre, on terms similar to what Paghat was expressing. “The Kokusai Theater lives on in the minds of many of us who grew up watching movies there,” he wrote. “It positively influenced our lives through impressing on us varying degrees of Japanese history and culture which we would not otherwise have been exposed to. Across the past twenty years, whenever I have asked fellow Sansei [third generation Japanese Americans] why they were attending or volunteering at a Japanese cultural event, a common reply has been a variant of, ‘I grew up watching movies at the Kokusai Theater with my grandmother.’”^[8]

Time has allowed Elaine Kitamura, Tadao and Mitsuye’s daughter, to reflect on the legacy they left for the people of Seattle’s International District. She didn’t necessarily recognize it growing up; as a youngster, her thoughts frequently went to all the fun times she was missing because she had to work the family business. “…[N]ow that I’m much older I can see how valuable [the Kokusai] was,” she told me in 2021. “At the time I was a young kid and I was sorta like ‘Why are we working so hard?’” Today, however, she treasures what she once resented, mostly because it brought such joy to local residents. You still can feel her attachment to the Kokusai and her pride in the family’s legacy, even though the Kitamuras gave up running the venue more than four decades ago. The Kokusai is what her father built, and it’s what the Kitamura family had to offer. “It’s really good to know that my father made a difference in that community. That he had the theatre, people came, people enjoyed watching these films, enjoying he culture and the language…The theatre was really a hub…it meant a lot to us, but then also, now that I think about it, it really served the community.”^[9]

Indeed, it did – impacting the local Japanese, Chinese and Filipino communities for generations and beyond. Over its history the venue experienced some down times – a lot of down times – and it’s the unlikeliest of silent era movie theatres to have survived for as long as it did. Realistically the Atlas should have been razed in the 1960s, after which it would only be a curiosity in old photographs. But thanks to Tadao Kitamura and his family, the venue was given a second lease on life and, in the process, secured its legacy. On the one hand it evolved into something entirely different. But on the other the venue ended its life the same way it started – a place where local residents, from a minority community, came to enjoy movies on their own terms. The programming had changed, but in a way the Atlas/Kokusai came full circle, fulfilling its purpose.

By Eric L. Flom – November 2025

Notes:

[1] See Linda Keene, Susan Byrnes and Marla Williams, “Last Reel for Kokusai Theater – Roof of Old Japanese Cinema Collapses,” Seattle Times, 11 February 1997, Page B1; and “Experts Don’t Know Yet Why Part of Theater’s Roof Collapsed,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 12 February 1997, Page B2.
[2] Elaine Kitamura interview with Eric L. Flom, 7 March 2021.
[3] Linda Keene, Susan Byrnes and Marla Williams, “Last Reel for Kokusai Theater – Roof of Old Japanese Cinema Collapses,” Seattle Times, 11 February 1997, Page B1.
[4] See “Concerns Over Asbestos Linger after Collapse,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 14 February 1997, Page B2; and Charlie Ritts, “Concerning the Kokusai: An investigative report on the collapse of the Kokusai Building,” International Examiner, 5 March-18 March, 1997, Page 16.
[5] “Burned Kokusai Theater to be Razed,” Seattle Times, 14 February 1997, Page B2.
[6] “Paghat,” Kokusai Theatre, Cinema Treasures (http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/12527), accessed 3 February 2016. In another parallel with the way silent film theatres ran half a century before, the Kokusai Theatre had a specially prepared slide that they could throw up on the screen whenever the film broke, asking for the audience’s forgiveness while they fixed the picture. (Elaine Kitamura interview with Eric L. Flom, 9 January 2022.)
[7] “Paghat,” Kokusai Theatre, Cinema Treasures (http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/12527), accessed 3 February 2016.
[8] David Yamaguchi, “Growing up at the Kokusai Theater,” Discover Nikkei (http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/jounral/2016/6/14/Kokusai-theater/), accessed 7 February 2021.
[9] Kitamura interview, 7 March 2021.

Elaine Kitamura ca. 2016 (Courtesy The North American Post)

Tai Tung, which bills itself as Seattle's oldest Chinese restaurant. (Photo by Matt Hucke)

1 2

The Atlas Shrugs: The Rise, Fall, Rise and Fall of Seattle’s Most Unique Theatre

Reel 6: Postscript

It’s January 2022 and I’m meeting Elaine Kitamura for the first time. We were introduced about nine months earlier, had already conducted a short telephone interview and exchanged a few emails. But this was our first time meeting face-to-face.

We met for lunch at Tai Tung (655 S. King Street), about half a block from where the Kokusai once stood. This was one of the many local restaurants that the Kitamuras patronized back when they ran the theatre, dashing off in small groups to eat in shifts so they could get back to work as quickly as possible. The International District has changed significantly over the last 40 years, so many of the old establishments are long gone. Tai Tung bills itself as the oldest Chinese restaurant in Seattle, having been operated by the Chan family since 1935; current owner Harry Chan is the third generation to run the establishment. Having the Kitamuras as regulars isn’t Tai Tung’s only brush with the movies. Back in the 1960s, when actor Bruce Lee called Seattle home, Tai Tung was a favorite restaurant, and the booth he frequented has become a shrine for die-hard fans. Unsurprisingly, the Kitamura family has remained extremely loyal to Tai Tung. Not only did it feed them back in the Kokusai days, but Harry Chan has been a longtime family friend. They continue to patronize the restaurant to this day, and usually came down from their Beacon Hill home at least once a week for a family meal, until Mitsuye’s health (and COVID-19) forced a switch to take-out.

Elaine is in her mid-60s with a sunny disposition. After earning her communications degree from the University of Washington, she spent most of her career working for various local media outlets, including KOMO television and KJR radio. In 2016 she moved into the healthcare field, becoming the Regional Director for Multicultural Initiatives at the American Heart Association.

When we talked the first time, many months earlier, Elaine was leery of being interviewed. She didn’t know anything about me or my project, so the barriers were up. For me this was a new experience – most interviewees are only too delighted when I ask them to talk about themselves. But, like Mitsuye, Elaine’s a very private person, so I was going to have to earn her trust. It took some work on my part, but I eventually got there. Still, however, there were parameters. Even though the Kokusai Theatre had been dark for almost 40 years, the family was still extremely protective of their legacy. Once Elaine got comfortable, she opened up on lots of subjects. But not everything was up for grabs – she was very specific about information I could use, and information that were meant only for my ears.

Tai Tung was Elaine’s idea, and she made all the arrangements, phoning Harry Chan and reserving a quiet table where we could talk. We shared a meal, but I deferred to her expertise with the menu; this turned out to be one of my better decisions. But, before we could order, a Tai Tung employee came over to say hello – he had not seen the Kitamura family in some time, and was happy to have Elaine back. Elaine, too, was pleased to see an old friend, addressing him by name and asking about his family. She wasn’t as familiar with the server, but was quite specific about how she wanted her dishes prepared. To that end, Elaine offered to speak directly with the cook if it would help avoid confusion with the order. The cook never emerged from the back, but over the course of our 90-minute lunch several other Tai Tung employees dropped by, one by one, welcoming Elaine and inquiring about the family. It was like dining with a celebrity.

The Kitamuras are fiercely proud of the Kokusai Theatre, but were working too hard to stop and consider the impact they were having. It was always their goal to serve the greater good, but they didn’t expect Tadao’s business would be so fondly remembered after all these years. “My dad did that…,” Elaine remarked over the shrimp with lobster sauce, prepared to her exact specifications. “I just didn’t realize how much that theatre meant to a lot of people. It was a big deal for people to have a place to go because there [were] no other forms of media reflecting your culture.”^[1]

Elaine was candid about the difficulty of growing with Kibei parents, in a traditional Japanese family that operated under a rigid set of rules. Several times she laughed about instances when her parents were too stern or too stubborn, but at no point did you question her affection or respect. This was especially apparent because Mitsuye Kitamura passed away only four months before we met, in September 2021, at the age of 93. Elaine was living in the family home and personally cared for Mitsuye for as long as she could. Nearly four months on, it was still difficult for her to talk about her mother.

What helped Elaine through the grieving process were the commitments she made to Mitsuye. This is exactly what the family did when Tadao passed away in 1976 – they carried on, operating the Kokusai as before, honoring his memory by showing films the way he wanted them shown. History was repeating itself. Before she passed in September, Mitsuye was already discussing who would be getting what on her annual Christmas list – something Elaine dutifully followed through on. And she was still rising at 5:30 a.m. every day to feed the family cats, as her mother always insisted she do. Elaine laughed a bit and fully acknowledged that she could change that schedule if she wanted, but she hadn’t, and she probably wouldn’t, at least as long as she has those cats. “A lot of that is in memory of them,” she said of Tadao and Mitsuye, “but they instilled that in us.”^[2]

Toward the end of our meal, as people continued to drop by and wish Elaine well, I reminded her that Tadao had been the neighborhood’s goodwill ambassador, making social calls on all kinds of local businesses. As a child Elaine wasn’t very fond of these stops. And yet, here she was, in a corner of the Tai Tung dining room, greeting person after person as old friends and asking, warmly and genuinely, about themselves and their families. And her trip down from Beacon Hill didn’t end with me. After lunch there were errands to run. There was barbecued pork to pick up at a shop across the street – Elaine assured me it was the best in the entire International District. Then there was grocery shopping to do at Uwajimaya, the famed Asian market with Northwest origins going back to 1928. There may have been other places she planned to go as well. I was just her lunch date; several other things also needed her attention.

No one can replace Tadao Kitamura, the unofficial mayor of Chinatown. But based on what I observed in January 2022, I feel assured that the deputy mayor is now on duty.

By Eric L. Flom – November 2025

Notes:

[1] Elaine Kitamura interview with Eric L. Flom, 9 January 2022.
[2] Ibid.

The Atlas Shrugs:
The Rise, Fall, Rise and Fall of Seattle's Most Unique Theatre

Preview

Reel 1: Lay of the Land

Reel 2: Big in (Little) Japan

Reel 3: The Setting Sun

Reel 4: Renewed and Reimagined

Reel 5: Twilight

Reel 6: Postscript

Keep Exploring

Chapter 24

Buster’s Last Stand:
Silent Nights at the Granada Organ Loft

Chapter 26

The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea:
Wiliam H. Harbeck and the Story of his Story

Chapter 27

Hollywood by the Sea:
A New Tacoma, Through the Eyes of H.C. Weaver

The Atlas Shrugs: The Rise, Fall, Rise and Fall of Seattle's Most Unique Theatre

Preview

Reel 1: Lay of the Land

Reel 2: Big in (Little) Japan

Reel 3: The Setting Sun

Reel 4: Renewed and Reimagined

Reel 5: Twilight

Reel 6: Postscript

Keep Exploring

Chapter 24

Buster’s Last Stand: Silent Nights at the Granada Organ Loft

Chapter 26

The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea: Wiliam H. Harbeck and the Story of his Story

Chapter 27

Hollywood by the Sea: A New Tacoma, Through the Eyes of H.C. Weaver

The Atlas Shrugs:
The Rise, Fall, Rise and Fall of Seattle's Most Unique Theatre

Buster’s Last Stand:
Silent Nights at the Granada Organ Loft

The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea:
Wiliam H. Harbeck and the Story of his Story

Hollywood by the Sea:
A New Tacoma, Through the Eyes of H.C. Weaver