People following the war of words between long-time Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman Jr. and newcomer Jeff Rhodes are probably wondering whether Freeman can get away with accusing Rhodes of being a low-down, no-good subsidy sniffer.

Freeman (also in the news this week as a mentor and past employer of the newly unemployed right-wing radio ideologue John Carlson) seems to have a case, at least from a "free-market" standpoint. The hometown boy turned Bellevue Square into one of the region's premier shopping destinations and built the Bellevue Place hotel/office complex without a penny of taxpayer-backed assistance. Meanwhile, Rhodes, a recent transplant from Chicago-- where he learned how to shake government trees for handouts-- wants to use a low-interest, state-sponsored loan to help him expand Bellevue's Meydenbauer Convention Center and build a new retail/entertainment complex next door.

"Sucking on subsidies is a real conflict, in my opinion," Freeman crowed in a December 19, front-page article in The Seattle Times, which pictured him standing proudly at the foot of his Bellevue Place. "Once you start government subsidies, how do you compete with it?" (People thinking that Freeman is taking a noble stand against corporate welfare should think again. He's trying to torpedo Rhodes' development because he's planning a major commercial project of his own, which will have to compete for tenants.)

By criticizing Rhodes' plans to seek government-backed financing, Freeman essentially dared anybody who was listening to unearth a case in which he--Bellevue's favorite son--benefited from the government's generosity. Freeman himself may have never slurped off the government's teat, but the same can't be said for his grandfather. Once you hear the story of Miller Freeman, you'll understand why Kemper Jr. didn't need much help from the government to build his empire.

In 1905, around the time the government-backed Union Pacific railroad was looking for terminal sites in the Northwest, Miller Freeman bought two pieces of land on Sixth Avenue in downtown Seattle. Within a few months he landed his first big real estate deal--the sale of the Sixth Avenue property to Union Pacific, for a then-princely $35,000 profit.

That same year, Freeman began to take an interest in Japanese- American relations; i.e., Americans should understand that Japanese "yellow" clashed with red, white, and blue. Until his death in 1955, Miller Freeman avidly pursued his anti-Japanese obsession, and his Eastside real estate business grew as a direct result.

Freeman owned several newspapers, including the Bellevue American and Town Crier, and used them as vehicles for his racist blather. "Japanese population and power in the western Unites States is increasing at a sure, accumulative rate," he once said, "which will inevitably give the white man his choice between subjugation and retreat." As the president of the Anti-Japanese League of Washington, and as a Washington state legislator, he led a campaign that culminated in the passage of the Alien Land Law of 1921, which forbade people of Japanese descent from owning land-- or even leasing it. Shortly thereafter, Freeman began buying up cheap land on the Eastside, formerly home to thousands of successful Japanese farmers. In 1925 he bought land in Medina; three years later he moved his family into a new mansion there.

After Pearl Harbor, Miller Freeman saw another opportunity to screw over Japanese Americans, and make a profit, too. He went to Washington, D.C, to urge the Tolan Committee to lock up people of Japanese descent. And he kept up his racist rantings in his newspapers, calling the Japanese an "insoluble race" bent on "infiltration."

With Japanese Americans tucked away in internment camps, Freeman was able to reap the full benefits of the new Mercer Island Floating Bridge (which he had lobbied to have built, and which opened in 1940). The Eastside, cleansed of its Asian-American population, was now safe for white businessmen, largely due to the efforts of Miller Freeman. His son, the first Kemper Freeman, built the original Bellevue Square, after convincing his father to buy a piece of land along 104th Avenue Northeast.

We don't expect Kemper Freeman Jr. to dig up these unseemly chapters of his family history. We're sure he's busy trying to bury them. Wonder if Jeffrey Rhodes has anything to compete with this?

Research for this article was culled from a series of articles written by the Eastside Journal's David Niewart about the 50th anniversary of the Japanese internment, and from "The Memoirs of Miller Freeman, 1875--1955."