Today the Pacific Northwest is well known for being the motherland of liberal, umbrella toting, hipsters with the typical PNW love interests ranging from mountain biking, dressed from head to toe in REI gear, to visiting micro-breweries on the daily in order to be up to date on the latest and greatest “Pike Pale Ale” or “Space Needle Golden Ipa” while chatting up various fellow Microsoft employees. The birth place of coffee lovers main hit Starbucks, and the home to one of the most well-known rock bands Nirvana. However, the Pacific Northwest wasn 't always known as the hippie infested legal marijuana state. Decades ago, this area was characterized by multiple large scale incidents that either occurred close to home or took place leagues away. …show more content…
Nonetheless these aggressions soon morphed into World War II. Soon after came mounting hostilities among the white citizens across the Pacific Northwest, World War II served as a major critical turning point for East Asian descents that began to receive the act of racial segregation from their fellow citizens or peers because of both their outer physical looks accompanied with increasing paranoia, such as the already established idea that Asian individuals are taking employment opportunities. In Monica Sone’s memoir Nisei Daughter, a firsthand account that presented a portion of the life events of a Japanese American girl which included her time with her family during their stay at Japanese internment camps. Throughout her life, even before certain basic freedoms were stolen from her, she and her fellow Japanese had dealt with racism based on different levels and reasons ranging from being unable to own property if you were not American born, being rejected on certain rentals because of your ethnicity, or unfair treatment concerning the law. However, citizenship afforded the American-born children of Japanese immigrants with a sort of protection, it …show more content…
Boeing acted as a leading private employer and the base of the Puget Sound economy because of the military contracts the Cold War provided. Population growth and diversification of the Pacific Northwest had occurred because of the range of desirable jobs in the area. The aftermath of the Cold War continues to influence world affairs today but until recently people are beginning to recognize the true extent of both the massive environmental damage that has resulted from military activities during the Cold War and how it has caused quite formidable damage to the human health. The continued expansion, production, and pollution occurring at Hanford and uranium mines had created the consequences could be felt for decades as seen in both the western interior of the United States and the city of Spokane. The individuals that live within the two areas have battled with health issues, from blood cancer to kidney disease, plus environmental contamination which stems from the radiation being exuded by chemical debris. In Spokane, the EPA had created a scientific model that displays that an individual who had their daily diet and water source come from the Blue Creek had a “one in five chance of developing cancer from the added radiation” (Cornwall, 5). Hanford Engineer Works was made up of several hundreds of workers, all which resided in the