Elmer Katayama was in the first group of Boy Scouts to visit Camp Parsons. He stepped off a powered launch onto the beach when it opened near Seattle on July 7, 1919.
Elmer was one of two known Japanese American youth at the camp that summer. Along with one known Black youth, they highlighted the inclusion of non-white boys in early Seattle Scouting history.
He and his family were at the upper echelon of Seattle’s Japanese community. As he and his siblings reached adulthood, pursuit of careers took them away from their homeland to Japan.
Camp Parsons
Today Camp Parsons is one of the oldest Scout camps in the US. It’s the oldest west of the Mississippi River. It’s located across Hood Canal from Seattle, north of Olympia near the town of Brinnon. It still feels like quite a trip to get there, but for many years it was only accessible by “mosquito fleet” steamer. Until a proper dock was built, the trip required transfer to a launch for the last leg.
Camp Parsons served the Seattle Area Council. That council continues today in a different shape as Chief Seattle Council. Seattle scouts already had a small camp in the city’s Seward Park before 1919, but nothing like Parsons. They got additional nearby camps in 1925 on Mercer Island, but Parsons continued to be the premier camp.
Those two Mercer Island camps were Camp Backus and Camp Rotary. They are discussed in the “Camp locations” section of the article Blue Ox Camp on this site.
Katayama at Camp Parsons
That first year, 75 scouts visited for the one-month camp. They cleared camp sites, opened space, and hid from the occasional cougar. More merit badges were earned in one month than in the previous six years of the council. Despite that achievement, the camp fell short of one aspiration. Leaders hoped that one of the boys would be Seattle’s first Eagle Scout. None made it, but three got close to Life, missing just a required merit badge.
On July 28, 1919, a group of parents and siblings visited the Boy Scouts in their rugged, remote camp. They traveled on the steamer Hyak from Seattle to Poulsbo, then car to Bangor, and then a launch to the camp to visit the camping boys. Among them were “Mr. and Mrs. Katayama, daughters and friends”.
Most of the 75 boys stayed for the full month that Camp Parsons was open that first summer. They arrive July 7th and returned August 3rd. That was likely true for Elmer Katayama, although it’s possible he returned home a week early with his family.
Who was Katayama?
Elmer Katayama’s parents were Kakuichi and Otowa, immigrants from Japan, and he was born in Bellingham, Washington in 1905. An article in the local Puget Sound American called him the first Japanese American born in Bellingham, and described his christening and that his parents were fluent in English.
The Katayamas moved to Seattle not long after Elmer’s birth in Bellingham. A profile about his father Kakuichi in the 1916 History of Seattle related that the Katayamas were Baptist. It also said that Kakuichi was an interpreter (the profession he listed in the 1917 draft and 1920 census) and legal adviser (he advertised as a “Japanese lawyer” in the Seattle Times in 1917), business adviser, and president of the Japanese-American Trading Company. At other times he was an oyster importer, school teacher, and probably a bunch of other things.
Kakuichi Katayama became a leader of the Japanese community in Seattle. He translated for most legal and immigration proceedings and had personal business interests. His friendships drew Dr. Kyo Koike and Iwao Matsushita to Seattle from Japan. They were two of the men at the core of the Seattle Camera Club, a group of photographers that heavily influenced the direction of art photography in the United States. Presumably the Katayamas had other direct and indirect influence on the community.
Kakuichi was a former student of the University of Washington, per a 1922 Seattle Times article. But there’s no further description available of what he studied or for how long .
Elmer in Scouting
Elmer Katayama’s name was included in a list of Scouts awarded pins for selling US Treasury stamps on May 7, 1918 in Seattle.
When he visited Camp Parsons or the first time, Elmer was 14 years old. He was a member of Troop 31, which met at the Yesler library (now Douglass-Truth). A few years later Troop 31 became too small and merged with Troop 57. That troop met at the Rainier School on 23rd and King (currently the site of the Seattle Central College Wood Technology Program). It’s a bit surprising that despite Kakuichi’s prominence in the Japanese community, and despite the family being Baptist, they apparently did not help form Troop 53 at the Japanese Baptist Church in 1920.
In 1922, Elmer was a “platoon leader” in Troop 57. This may have been a role akin to senior patrol leader for half of the troop.
Although the Seattle P-I published one page about Boy Scouts every week in 1919 and the 1920s, unfortunately no advancement was published for Elmer. He apparently did not earn any merit badges or rank at Camp Parsons in 1919, but his name missing from other advancement announcements in the Seattle papers doesn’t mean he did not advance at all. Other youth’s known advancement is missing, and the article content was determine by what was relayed to the paper by each troop’s scribe.
Elmer attended Broadway High until 1924 and then the University of Washington until 1928, apparently following in his father’s footsteps. He graduated August 1928 with a degree in business management from UW and moved to Japan.
Katayamas after Elmer’s departure
Elmer’s sister Alice was a violin prodigy starting in the mid 1920s, with articles about her performances appearing in Seattle papers throughout 1926 to 1929, often with their sister Lillian on piano. Alice’s violin was described in 1929 as possessing qualities “of tone, feeling, imagination, and interpretive intelligence. She also has an individual charming simplicity.”
Seattle papers in April 1929 said that the family planned to move to Japan to allow Alice to become a professional musician. However, the family other than Elmer moved to Los Angeles in 1930. One 1930 LA Times article implied that she became a student of Woodbury College. Lillian entered UCLA, so certainly the move was intentional and meant to last some time.
The Katayamas’ youngest son Kenneth died in Los Angeles in 1930 at age 15. Alice and Lillian continued to perform in LA, earning praise as “well known”, and having “established a reputation… as gifted.” Another article said that “everywhere they have appeared they have won friends and admirers.” In 1932, Lillian graduated from UCLA, and then the girls and their parents moved to Tokyo.
A few articles mentioned that Lillian and Alice were living in Japan in 1932 and finding some success performing together as musicians, with Alice on violin and Lillian on piano.
Elmer and Lillian during and after World War Two
Later mentions of Lillian reveal that she was jailed by the Japanese government as a suspected spy during World War Two. She married and became Lillian Taniichi by 1951. That year she was working for the US Army, who still occupied and controlled Japan, managing civil property for GHQ in Tokyo.
Elmer Junichi Katayama also survived World War Two in Japan. An article in a Utah paper in 1970 described improved trade for local shipper IML Freight, and that their Tokyo rep was visiting. The article mercifully removed all doubt with a short bio: “Katayama was born in this country in Bellingham, Wash, grew up in Seattle and graduated from the University of Washington. He moved to Japan in 1928 before the Great Depression. ‘I didn’t speak any Japanese at all,’ he recalls, ‘and for a while I had a foreign accent.'”
More about Elmer appeared two years earlier in a 1968 Salt Lake Tribune article. “… a native of the United States and foreign trade graduate of the University of Washington (’28), who went to Japan in 1929 to visit. — BECAME JAPANESE CITIZEN — He remained in Japan to become a citizen and this week visited IML headquarters in Salt Lake City – the first time he has been in the United States in 38 years….”
What happened to the Katayamas?
I’d like to know what became of each member of the family, and know more about Elmer’s life. He was president of a company before joining IML. But what did he and the rest of the family do in the 1930s? What was their wartime experience, and what led to Lillian’s imprisonment? Did any of them have children and are there descendants today?
Generally I leave these sorts of questions in the hope that someone else finds them later and searches somewhere I did not know about to find the answer. Every once in a while a family member or expert contacts me with surprising information. It’s fun to speculate and wait.
Katayama and Camp Parsons in UW archives
A photo at the top of this article labeled PH Coll 262.A-65 shows a scene almost certainly at Camp Parsons.
The UW archives describes it as “Mr. Katayama’s family at Boy Scouts Camp, Washington, approximately 1920-1930” and includes the subject heading “Katayama, Katuichi–Family”. It’s from a collection of photos by Kyo Koike that came to the archives via Iwao Matsushita.
We can correct the date range by realizing that Elmer Katayama was in Boy Scouts from 1917 to 1924. Based on that, the only possible locations are Camp Parsons or another camp owned by the Seattle Area Council inside of Seattle’s Seward Park. However, Koike also took photos labeled “on Hood Canal” that include Elmer in his Scout uniform and seems to be from the same trip. Circumstantially, the “Boy Scouts Camp” photo appears to be Camp Parsons.
From left to right in that Camp Parsons photo there were: two women standing and sitting, one Otowa Katayama, and the other possibly Hanaye Matsushita; Kakuichi Katayama sitting; sisters Lillian and Alice Katayama sitting on a log; Kenneth Katayama next to them; and then two Boy Scouts at the end of the log. One was definitely Elmer Katayama.
The other, in the background, appears to be George Nakashima, whose time in Scouting is described in another article on this site. Nakashima attended camp, and the visible part of his head is consistent with other contemporary photographs.
More Camp Parsons photos
The Kyo Koike collection has a number of unscanned photographs that inspire curiosity and might help identify whether the photos were at Camp Parsons.
Several are scenes at a Boy Scout camp: B-11 “People walking at Boy Scout camp”; B-12 “Clearing and trees at Boy Scout camp”, B-13 “Shoreline at Boy Scout camp”.
And there are more Hood Canal scenes: A-53 “Trees along Hood Canal”; A-54 “Shoreline of Hood Canal”; A-55 “Shoreline and trees of Hood Canal”, A-57 “Elmer and Kenneth at Hood Canal” (clearly a photo of the Katayamas). Other Hood Canal photos may be related, but a set seem to be of another family at Union.
Further reading
Seattle Scouting:
- Seattle’s first patrol leaders
- The Start of Scouting in Seattle
- Seattle’s first Eagle Scout
- George Nakashima and Scouting
Seattle Cub Scouting:
- Cub Scouts began in Port Angeles (part 1)
- Camp DYB, 1925 Cub camp in Port Angeles (part 2)
- Wolf Cubs lost at war (part 3)
- Blue Ox Camp, Seattle’s Paul Bunyan themed camp (part 4)
- What did they sing at Blue Ox Camp? (part 5)
- Cub Scout Alphabet
I have a number of additional articles in mind which look at the start of Scouting in Seattle, and activity by Japanese American boys. Some are partially drafted. Those could include:
- The Scout patrol at Collins Park
- Capitol Hill’s first Scouts
- Troops 50 to 59
- Harold Fisher and Troop 52
- Victor Steinbrueck in Scouting