The Fate of California's Japan Towns

San Francisco's pioneer Japanese immigrants arrived in the 1860s when the Japanese government abolished its long-standing isolationist policy.

Eventually, the Japanese established a community called Japan Town, or "nihon machi" in the city's western addition district. By the 1930s, the area covered thirty square blocks!

According to Paul Osaki, Executive Director of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California, "At its height this was a bustling community, like a lot of immigrant communities throughout the United States of America. There were the bakers, the grocers, the barbershops, the restaurants, the places where people hung out, the candy store. It was an incredible neighborhood type of feeling."

But a neighborhood dissolved because of forced evacuation and internment. In 1942, Japan Town's business district was snuffed out. Its businesses forced to close. Residents incarcerated. The community gone, almost overnight. And some San Franciscans wanted to keep it that way.

Explains Paul Osaki, "When we talk about the economic loss to Japan Town communities over the course of the war and later on we really have to look back to what was happening in the 1940s. And even here in San Francisco the Board of Supervisors tried to figure out that once the Japanese were evacuated they would never come back. They tried to declare San Francisco Japan Town a slum area as a possible means to ensure that the Japanese would never come back to San Francisco. But they didn't have laws in effect to actually take over blocks and blocks of property and not give it back to the community that owned it."

So following their release from the camps, many San Francisco Japanese Americans were able to return to Japan Town and rebuild their lives.

Among the first businesses to open: a Japanese ceramics store called Honnami Taedo, owned by Sumi Honnami's father.

Ms. Honnami remembers the challenges. "It was a difficult experience to be uprooted, but I think that all of us had a fighting spirit to start over," she recalls. "We started very small and fortunately my father had a previous business network and they were very helpful in helping him start a business."

Residents of other Japan Towns weren't so lucky. A small but vital Japan Town in Sacramento was "redeveloped" following World War Two and it no longer exists. Says Professor Wayne Maeda of Sacramento State University, "The major reason is war time relocation and forced removal of the Japanese in Sacramento. The Japanese never recovered because (only) about half to sixty percent returned so the community was smaller. But the ultimate nail in the coffin was redevelopment. 1958 where the city through eminent domain decided to redevelop the west end and force the Japanese to move once again."

In Los Angeles, "Little Tokyo" dodged the worst of the wrecking ball. Among its oldest businesses: Rafu Shimpo, the daily Japanese-English newspaper, in circulation since 1914.

Ellen Endo-Dizon is Editor in Chief. She says right after Pearl Harbor, the paper was still published, with a catch: censors required that "sensitive" material be deleted, so blank pages were occasionally printed.

Eventually, the paper was shut down. The Japanese-American staff sent to camp, but not before the son of the publisher did something daring. Determined to start over after the war, and fearing that the molds for Japanese type would be hard to find, he hid the mold under the floorboards of the newspaper's rented building. A building that he and his brothers continued to pay for while they were interned!

After the war, former employees pooled their money to resurrect Rafu Shimpo, a resource that became more valuable than ever.

"What the Japanese community now needed was information on where to go, how to get help, and where to go for jobs," adds Ms. Endo-Dizon.

The newspaper is right around the corner from another Little Tokyo landmark: Fugetsu-Do, one the few makers of traditional Japanese pastries.

Brian Kito is the third generation to run Fugetsu-Do, the business started by his grandfather in 1903.

"I made a promise to my dad that I'd try to make it to a hundred years. And we made it," Brian says proudly.

But following World War Two, the fate of Fugetsu-Do seemed anything but certain.

Roy Kito, Brian's father, ran the shop before the war, making Japanese-style rice crackers.

According to the senior Mr. Kito, when the "war started we have to close up. We rented a small place. Left all the equipment in there and after I came back, nothing. In my space, the door was broken. Nothing left. Everything stolen. I cried. I know I cried. I didn't have nothing."

So Roy Kito worked as a waiter and a cook. Anything to save enough to reopen Fugetsu-Do. By the late 1940s, he succeeded, but it wasn't easy. For him or for his new wife.

"I worked so hard, at least 16 hours a day. I worked too long. My wife say this is not the life for getting married. So I had a hard time, in business and to handle my wife," he adds with a smile.

Fortunately for the Kitos, there was strong demand for their hard-to-find product.

Roy stayed with the business until youngest son Brian took over in 1986.

Brian says that few people realize how difficult it was to succeed in business after being forced out: "For my father's era when they came back out of the camp, they had to restart all over. That's something that people have overlooked because if you realize the prejudice at that time, coming out of the camps and the financial hardships, to restart the store. That had to have been the hardest point and I don't think my dad gets as much credit as he richly deserves."

Additional resources, information, and places to visit:

Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California in San Francisco: www.jcccnc.org

The Japanese American Museum in San Jose is located in one of the three remaining Japan Towns in California. Photographic exhibits include a look at pioneers who established San Jose's Japan Town in 1900, the role that the Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team played in World War Two, along with touching recollections of Japanese Americans returning home after being released from camp.

In addition to its indoor exhibits, the Japanese American Museum also offers walking tours. A docent will take you to historic sites, including the impressive Buddhist Church, which served as a temporary shelter after the war.

The web site has details at www.jamsj.org