A man vandalized the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience on Thursday, an attack local community leaders say was motivated by racial hatred.
Around 5:15 p.m., a man with a sledgehammer smashed nine windows of the museum along Canton Alley South, said museum spokesperson Steve McLean. Seattle Police Department officers responded to the incident about 45 minutes later.
“The Wing Luke Museum is concerned about its staff and community, and that’s its focus right now,” McLean said. “Obviously we’re a resilient community, and you’ll see that on display in the weeks to come.”
The museum is an anchor in the Chinatown International District, a premier educational and cultural institution in Seattle, and the only pan-Asian Pacific American community-based museum in the country. The alley itself is a historic site, and “the heart of the Chinatown International District neighborhood,” museum Executive Director Joël Barraquiel Tan said.
“The attack and the damage, beyond the physical, was in part symbolic,” he said. “It was targeted. It was planned.”
The attack occurred while a group of community leaders and residents were inside the museum for an after-hours tour organized by Tsuru for Solidarity, an organization focused on Japanese Americans working to build solidarity with other communities of color and fight against racial and state violence.
Sitting in the museum’s theater, attendees initially thought the loud noises outside were sounds of construction, said co-president of the Seattle Japanese American Citizens League Stanley Shikuma, who was there.
“It got louder and it was shaking the floor, and we could hear crashing glass,” Shikuma said. “I think some people’s minds were racing to, ‘Is this a bomb?’ ”
Attendees went outside to investigate, Shikuma said, and found an older white man leaning against the wall of the building with a sledgehammer in his hand. A security guard took the sledgehammer from the man, who eventually sat down, saying he was tired, according to Shikuma.
Shikuma said staff members asked the man why he smashed the windows, and “he was saying stuff like: ‘The Chinese are responsible for all this, they’ve ruined my life. … That’s why I came to Chinatown.’ ”
Five people called 911, Shikuma said, but Seattle Police Department operators said they could not immediately respond because it was a vandalism incident where no one was hurt.
“The attitude I was getting [was], ‘It’s another broken window in Chinatown, who cares, write up a report.’ ” Shikuma said.
Barraquiel Tan said that a police dispatcher told one of the 911 callers to not call back because officers were too busy.
“That pushback is very panic-inducing,” Barraquiel Tan said.
Frustrated by the lack of response, Shikuma sent an email to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, time-stamped 6:03 p.m.
“This is outrageous and unacceptable — that a major community institution is attacked and vandalized (to the tune of thousands of dollars, maybe even tens of thousands) and Seattle Police basically said they can’t be bothered!” he wrote. “This is yet another instance of neglect and lack of respect and concern for Asian Americans in general and the CID in particular.”
Police ultimately responded to a property damage call at 6:03 p.m., according to the responding officer’s probable-cause document. Five 911 callers reported a male described as white, 70 years old, heavy build and wearing a blue shirt and bluejeans destroying windows with a sledgehammer, according to police spokesperson Detective Valerie Carson.
Shikuma said police arrived around 6:15 p.m. to arrest the man.
“The suspect told police, ‘the Chinese have been torturing [him] for years and [he] had to do something,’ ” Carson said in an email.
Officers arrested the man on suspicion of a hate crime offense and first-degree malicious mischief (property damage), according to the probable-cause document.
Barraquiel Tan estimates repairing the damaged windows will cost “in the hundreds of thousands of dollars” because the museum occupies a historic building.
The Seattle Times typically does not name suspects until they are charged. The man, who appeared in court Friday, remains in King County Jail. The court set his bail at $30,000.
“We are grateful to our members and to the Wing Luke staff for immediately addressing the situation, deescalating, and keeping those at the program safe,” Tsuru for Solidarity officials said in a statement Friday. “Please look out for ways to support the Wing Luke as they rebuild physically and emotionally.”
On Friday morning, Wing Luke staff members began working on removing the shattered panes of glass and boarding up the windows.
In a statement, Harrell condemned the apparent hate crime and the perpetrator “in the strongest possible terms.”
“An incident like this underscores the importance of recruiting and retaining officers to ensure a well-staffed department, as we work to build a Seattle Police Department that reflects the diversity of the neighbors it serves and that responds to the needs of the community in a swift, appropriate, and culturally competent manner,” he said in a statement Friday.
He said his office has reached out to the Office of Economic Development to see if repair assistance to the museum can be accelerated to quickly fix the damage and offset any financial burden.
The attack comes as some Asian American and Pacific Islander residents in Seattle feel heightened concern about public safety, and a growing sense of indifference from local law enforcement and city leaders, Shikuma said.
Since June, at least 14 home-invasion robberies — all targeting victims of Asian descent — in South Seattle have been reported to the Seattle Police Department. No arrests have been made in connection to the robberies.
On Monday, footage was released of the vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild joking about the death of 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula, a graduate student at Northeastern University who was from India. She was fatally struck in January by another officer’s car in a South Lake Union crosswalk.
These cases all are set against the backdrop of increased hate crimes targeting Asians and Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, Shikuma said.
“It seems like there’s a never-ending train of things that continuously compromise our ability to advance as a neighborhood,” Barraquiel Tan said. “Rather than treating it as a problem to solve, what can we do in media, in government, in organizations, to recognize this neighborhood as an American cultural treasure?”
The museum will be open for regular hours again this weekend. Sunday will be the final day to see the museum’s exhibit “RESISTERS: A Legacy of Movement from Japanese American Incarceration,” which explores activism during World War II and how the intergenerational trauma and injustice of incarceration sowed the seeds of contemporary social justice movements.