Ron, my neighbor, is a wealth of information about this area. He grew up here and has lots of stories. But when Mark and I walk into Japantown, two blocks away, we are able to read about another side to the stories. Our Japantown is one of three left in the US - one in San Francisco and the other in LA. The members of this community speak about Japantown and its history with pride. I visited the oldest ongoing department store in San Jose - a store in Japantown that sells fabrics (why I was there of course) as well as other Japanese products. The woman working there told me of several of the celebrations that will be happening this spring, summer and fall. Not only are the residents that you talk to informative, but along the street are benches with images and stories carved into their surfaces. One building that I pass every time I walk to the Farmers' Market is the old Ideal Laundry. The "handsome, two-story fireproof brick building, erected at a cost of $30,000" (taken from the story on the bench) was founded by I. Tsurukawa. Brick seemed to be a very popular building material as many of the buildings burned - some due to normal fires and some to arsonists who weren't very friendly toward the Asian community. The building has beautiful blue tiles below the front windows. And its history since the laundry can be seen in the other signs attached to the facade. The before image is from the bench.
Another sad chapter in Japantown's history is the period during WWII. Anti-Japanese and Chinese feelings were always present in San Jose. I'll share stories and pictures of our Chinatown in another blog. But after Pearl Harbor, all Japanese on the West Coast were rounded up and taken to internment camps. In our Japantown, most residents were taken to Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming from 1942 to 1945. And in May, 1943 residents of San Jose passed a resolution opposing the return of the Japanese. An image from granite monument in Japantown:
According to Ron and my pet nanny (whose husband is Japanese-American and whose Japanese parents lived in Japantown during this period), once the government released the Japanese and they returned to Japantown, they began to rebuild their community. Many of today's businesses were started with with repatriation monies. And fifty years after the war, Japantown is a colorful center of Japanese culture.... and, of course, food.
Very similar to what happened in Vancouver. They have a Japantown that is now mostly a slum. They have very interesting exhibits on what it was like before WWII at the museum. During the war most of the japanese were forced out or were harrassed until they left voluntarily. Now that part of the downtown eastside is rundown and full of drugs.
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