by Akemi Tamanaha, Associate Editor
(This is part of our ongoing series, Lost Kinjo– a look at the more than 40 Japanese communities that disappeared after World War II. It is supported by funding from the California Public Library Civil Liberties Project and the Takahashi Family Foundation.)
San Francisco’s Japantown, known to some as Nihonmachi, is the oldest Japantown in the country. It is also one of only four surviving Japantowns in the country.
Nihonmachi is not a “Lost Kinjo,” but like many Japantowns that have since disappeared, it has and continues to face threats to its existence. The neighborhood is working on two major renovation projects in hopes of continuing to preserve the area.
How has Nihonmachi persevered? And what are advocates hoping to improve upon in the future?
Two Japantowns
Today, San Francisco’s Japantown is located just above the Filmore District and within a larger neighborhood that some refer to as “Western Addition.” But, the city’s first Japantown was actually in SoMa (South of Market Street).
The first Japanese immigrants arrived in 1869. Some settled in Chinatown but others moved to SoMa where other immigrants and working-class minorities lived. Articles and books like Suzie Kobuchi Okazaki’s Nihonmachi, a Story of San Francisco’s Japantown, say that Japanese Americans built a strong community in SoMa.
Homes and businesses in SoMa were unfortunately destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. After the earthquake, many Japanese Americans moved to Western Addition, establishing the San Francisco Japantown of today.
Two Major Displacements
Before World War II, San Francisco’s Japantown encompassed nearly 40 blocks, but now only claims 4-6 blocks. While a number of factors contribute to that drastic change in size, historians point to two major displacements.
The first came during World War II when the U.S. federal government ordered the incarceration of Japanese Americans. Over 5,000 Japanese Americans in San Francisco were forced to leave their homes.
In early 1945, after the government lifted its West Coast exclusion orders, around 2,500 Japanese Americans returned to San Francisco within a year. Soon, more followed. According to the California Migration Museum, many found it difficult to restart the businesses they had owned before incarceration.
The second displacement came in the 1960s. The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, established in 1948, was renewing “blighted” areas in the city. According to the California Migration Museum, the first phase of the Western Addition renewal, where Japantown was located, began in the 1950s. The second phase began in 1963.
Emily Murase, executive director of the Japantown Task Force, said in an interview with AsAmNews that buildings were often left “blighted” because Japanese and Black families were denied the bank loans they needed to pay for maintenance.
During the second phase, the agency bulldozed hundreds of buildings in a 60-block area. After they were finished, the California Migration Museum said that “883 businesses had been closed, 20,000 to 30,000 residents displaced, and 2,500 Victorian houses demolished.”
Many Japanese American families moved to other parts of the city.
The Japantown Peace Plaza that exists today was also built during that period of “redevelopment.” While many tourists and locals see it as a focal point for Japantown, Murase says the Plaza and shopping center have always been controversial because of the homes and businesses that were destroyed to create it.
Two Renovation Projects
The Peace Plaza is once again at the center of a major renovation project, which officially broke ground in May.
Murase says that different attempts to renovate the plaza, and to address leakage into the garage beneath it specifically, have failed for decades. In 2015, Japantown Foundation board members Bob Hamaguchi and Jon Osaki began putting together ideas for a renovation. They received a grant from the Japantown Foundation, allowing them to dedicate more time to creating plans.
Hamaguchi passed in 2017 but the work continued. In 2020, San Francisco’s Health of Recovery Bond ballot measure listed the Peace Plaza as a priority project. The measure passed, securing $25 million for the renovation project.
The project will fix the leakage into the garage and transform the Plaza into a community space. The new design will include new cherry trees, lighting, an expanded performance space, a visitor’s seating area and much more. Plaques will be created to commemorate historical figures and places.
There is also a parallel renovation in the works called the Osaka Way Upgrades Project, which is still in the planning stages. The project focuses on Osaka Way, formerly known as Buchanan Mall, a small dining and shopping area with cobblestone pathways that sits across the street from the Peace Plaza.
The project has three main objectives: improve accessibility for seniors, rehabilitate the Ruth Asawa fountains and support businesses by improving the cultural authenticity of the area.
Over the past few years, the city worked with the Japantown community on both projects.
“There have been countless town halls and stakeholder meetings and so both of those renovations will really reflect community input, which is different from what happened before,” Murase said.
Persevering and Persisting
Despite displacements and periods of economic decline, San Francisco’s Japantown is still standing. Murase says that sales tax revenue in the area is up, beyond pre-pandemic levels. The Japantown garage, she says, is the number one garage in the city in terms of visits by vehicles.
What’s the secret to this success?
One reason Murase believes is that the neighborhood attracts shoppers and visitors.
“Japantown has a lot of informal seating where you don’t have to pay to sit. Benches, tables like places where you can grab a bento and have it…I think it brings more people together, brings more people to Japantown,” she said.
She also credits the city for its commitment to cultural districts. San Francisco recently passed legislation to create designated cultural districts. Now, cultural districts like Japantown receive a quarter of a million dollars in funding from the city.
But despite the commercial success, Murase and other community organizations are concerned about the decline of Japanese American residents in Japantown. Murase said that one of the “unspoken tragedies” of the redevelopment in the 1960s is “that it transformed Japantown from a thriving neighborhood where kids grew up into a shopping district basically.”
Japantown leaders are working on ways to bring Japanese Americans, particularly young Japanese Americans, to the neighborhood.
An organization called KOHO is curating “programs that showcase and develop the talent and skills of Japanese American creatives” and their allies. They recently hosted a holiday market to raise money for families in Gaza. The Japantown Task Force has also opened up a visitor’s center that hosts community events like gentle yoga.
“We want to make Japantown a home for Japanese Americans, even though they don’t live there anymore,” Murase said.
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