Picture of the outside of the Panama Hotel

I put this picture and a group of others, up for my Mom. This is a place called the Panama Hotel in Seattle's International District.

This place is currently a tea and coffee shop. This building was also featured in a book that came out in 2009 called "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by an author named Jamie Ford.

After my Mom read the book with her book club in California, she asked me to take some photos of this building and send them to her. She very much enjoyed the book.

The book is a romance story that also deals with the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.

My family has a lot of connections to Japanese people, because my grandfather is a survivor of Bataan, and my cousin is half-Japanese. My grandfather, Jack Aldrich, had his time during World War II featured in a book that his wife wrote.

Also, my hometown was used as assembly center for Japanese Americans during World War II. This has only recently been acknowledged.