By MARK HIGGINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

In addition to the boom-and-bust cycles of Seattle's economy, the International District has been ravaged by several events. The most severe blow came in April 1942, when some 6,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans from Seattle were forced into internment camps in Minidoka, Idaho, and Manzanar, Calif.

Since the Alien Land Act of 1921 prevented many of them from owning property, they had no reason to return to Seattle once the war was over, says Tomio Moriguchi, chairman and chief executive of Uwajimaya, Inc. The family-run business has stores in the International District, Bellevue and is about to open a third in Beaverton, Ore.

Moriguchi's father, Fujimatsu Moriguchi, opened his store in Tacoma in 1928. Then came World War II. After internment in northern California, he came to Seattle and opened a store at Fifth Avenue South and South Main Street. He died in 1962. Today, six of his seven children help run the Uwajimaya chain.

The 1960s brought more changes to the International District: construction of Interstate 5. A decade later, it was hammered a second time when the Kingdome was built.

It was also a time of protest, when new neighborhood leaders such as Bob Santos demanded help and attention from City Hall. Santos, who grew up in the area, tells its history in a one-man performance called "Uncle Bob's Neighborhood." Santos gave two performances in June at Nippon Kan Theater as a benefit for the Tenants Union and Northwest Asian American Theater, one of five professional Asian theaters in the country.

Despite the work of Santos, Wing Luke Director Ron Chew and many others, the passage of time nibbles at the social fabric of the International District.

The second-generation immigrants who worked so hard to earn a living are now at an age when their children have graduated from college and moved to the suburbs, some without ever having learned their parents' native language or customs. Some Chinese American business owners also rue interracial marriages.

"All the old-timers are gradually going," says grocer Jimmy Mar. His son is a dentist and his daughters are teachers -- and they're not coming back to run the family store.

His little shop, Yick Fung & Co., is one of the oldest Chinese businesses in Seattle. Mar's brother, Howard, helps keep it open mainly for the elderly Chinese residents who have shopped there for decades.

The shop is stocked with dry goods, cookware, teas, noodles and a few vegetables, neatly displayed in the window. A spindle of waxed string is suspended above the counter for wrapping packages and the cash register is mechanical, a reminder of the days before digital. In the loft overhead, where dozens of Chinese men once slept, a few potted plants line the balcony.

Along with keeping an eye on the store, Jimmy Mar serves as the International District's unofficial funeral director.

Wei Eng, who runs the nearby KauKau Barbecue & Seafood Restaurant, says the old ways of the neighborhood and its residents are passing away: "All the people I socialized with have either retired or died."

Eng says his father brought him to Seattle from China in 1938. The following year his grandfather took him back to China because he thought he needed to be educated in his homeland.

Eng came back, was drafted and served in the Army. When he returned to Seattle, he worked his way through college at Seattle University and, later, the University of Washington.

Eng remembers the International District's red-brick streets, its wooden sidewalks and the pond where Uwajimaya now stands.

In addition to his restaurant, which his son helps run, Eng has been instrumental in saving one of the district's oldest buildings on South Jackson Street, and developing another nearby property. Eng jokes that former Mayor Charles Royer once referred to the old hotel building on Jackson Street as "an eyesore." After extensive remodeling, it is now an example of the benefits of restoration.

"The community has gained by his leadership," says the Wing Luke's Chew. "He showed these vacant buildings can be rehabilitated."