Volume XIII, Number 3• Summer 2000
San Francisco Japantown: the Prewar Era

San Francisco's Japantown: the Shaping of a Community
by Gary Kawaguchi, PhD and Shizue Seigel

Footprints of a Community: Maps of San Francisco's Japantown from 1910 and 1940
by Ben Pease

A Japantown Employment Agency: More Than a Job
by Kiku Funabiki

Timeline of Nikkei in San Francisco, 1850-1942
compiled by Kenji Murase

Japanese Language Schools: Kyowa Gakuen and Kinmon Gakuen
by Chizu Iiyama

Japantown in the 20s and 30s
memories of Noburu Hanyu

NJAHS Annual Report 1999-2000
President's Message, Executive Director's Report

1999-2000 Exhibitions, Publications, and Programs

1999-2000 Acquisitions; Welcome, New Board Members Locked In/Locked Out: NJAHS Creative Arts Competition for High School Students

Programs
New Members & Donations

Today there are only three Japantowns left in the continental United States—in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Jose. Now perceived by many Nikkei simply as a source for Japanase food, trinkets, or a dose of nostalgia, Japantowns originally arose out of distinct social, economic and political necessities. What are the conditions which created these Japanese American enclaves, what institutions did they spawn, and what led to their decline? In this issue, the first of two parts, we examine the role and function of Japantowns in the prewar era.

Stemming from a confluence of racism and convenience, immigrant enclaves originally serves as havens against the pervasive hostility of the dominant culture. At one time, there were dozens of enclaves throughout the West Coast, thriving in areas where a demand for cheap labor coincided with good transportation (to bring workers in and ship goods out). In port towns like San Francisco and Seattle, specialized services for newly arrived migrants flourished, as did import-export companies. Numerous rural Japantowns supplied surrounding farms as the Issei became a major agricultural force.

Urban or rural, Japantowns waxed and waned as social and economic conditions around them shifted. David Mas Masumoto writes in Country Voices: "a boom town, that's what they called Del Rey in the early 1900s. From a collection of scattered houses and a railroad stop emerged a bustling Japanese town"—the Del Rey community was burned out by a mysterious fire in the mid-1920s. Other prewar Japantowns were impacted by the Immigration Act of 1924, the Great Depression, or other factors. For instance, when the Port of Stockton relocated far from the city center in the 1920s, the local Nihonmachi began a slow decline. For many Japantowns, the wartime eviction of Japanese Americans from the West Coast was a death blow. In the postwar era, rural Japantowns withered as agribusiness swallowed up family farms. Meanwhile, urban Nihonmachis were laid waste by urban renewal.

In a sense, one could argue that the need for Japantowns passed with civil rights legislation which opened access to jobs and housing within the large society. On the other hand, Japantowns provided community—places to congregate, to share and pass on cultural values, to exchange ideas and to amass the energy to implement them. They provided a base for the development of churches, schools and social and political organizations which remain a living force in the national Nikkei community. The history of a single Nihonmachi, such as San Francisco's, clearly delineates larger forces that impacted many other Japantowns. An even more powerful lesson for today is that these close-knit communities gave birth to powerful and enduring counterforces against cultural dissolution and social, political and economic discrimination, time and time again.

– Shizue Seigel, Managing Editor