Read about the History of San Jose Japantown in a Book from JAMsj

Did you know that besides collecting historical artifacts, creating and displaying exhibits, and organizing community events, the Japanese American Museum of San Jose (JAMsj) also publishes books? We don’t publish books often, but they’ve been well-received by the community and historians alike. JAMsj is proud to announce the second printing of San Jose Japantown: A Journey, a book that chronicles Japantown from its 19th century beginnings adjacent to Heinleinville (the former San Jose Chinatown) to the present day. Written by Curt Fukuda and Ralph M. Pearce, the book was originally published in 2014 and quickly sold out within its first year. Thanks to a generous donation from Mie Barbara Nagareda, JAMsj is printing 1,000 copies of the book, which includes corrections by the authors.

The beautiful hardcover book features Images from all eras, maps, and reminisces from people whose lives were involved with San Jose Japantown. The book is available for Pre-order with Early Bird Pricing of $65 until July 4.

Learn more about the book and Japantown itself in our Q&A with the authors below.

Q. What do you hope that readers will gain by reading the book?

Ralph: I hope that readers will gain a sense of appreciation for not only the uniqueness of our historic and ethnically diverse Japantown, but for the life stories of individuals who lived and persevered through racism, the Depression, and war.

Curt: I hope the readers will enjoy learning about the culturally rich and diverse Japantown. There are amazing stories, photos and maps that tell the story of a community that was a sanctuary to the early Asians and now provides a home to a multicultural neighborhood. Ralph and I made sure that this was not a yearbook that only a handful of locals could appreciate. The book was written as a journey through history that anyone can pick up and appreciate, even if you never heard of San Jose or of Japantown.

Q. What updates have you made to the book?

Ralph: Our team is grateful that relatively few errors have come to our attention over the years since the publication of the book in 2014. We’ve taken the opportunity of this second printing to correct those, and include just a few updates here and there. Perhaps the most significant relates to the new construction on the old Heinlenville property adjacent to Japantown.

Curt: The updates are not extensive. This book is essentially a reprint. We have corrected the errors that were found in the first book. Thank goodness, there weren’t many and nearly all were minor. We also added a few new photos, a land acknowledgement and some new information, especially mentioning the huge development on the former Heinlenville property.

Q. How has San Jose Japantown changed since you wrote the first edition of the book?

Ralph: Our Japantown is a living, breathing community, and has been changing and evolving since its inception as an outgrowth of our 1887 Heinlenville Chinatown. The community is currently struggling with the difficult issues of crime, homelessness and the shortage of affordable housing in San Jose. These issues affect all communities in San Jose, of course, though some, like Japantown, are particularly vulnerable. Japantown has certainly dealt with adversity in the past, and one can only be hopeful that it will endure.

Curt: As Ralph mentioned, the community continues to evolve and faces many of the issues that other neighborhoods in San Jose face. Since the first printing of the book, we lost San Jose Tofu and Wing’s Restaurant, two longtime businesses that were essential destinations for many residents. We lost a few other businesses that were popular with the locals. This is not to say that Japantown is disappearing because as one business closes, another one opens in its place.

Q. What do you think is needed to keep San Jose Japantown a vibrant community for decades to come?

Ralph: Within the three remaining Japantowns, ours has continued its organic evolution relatively undisrupted. This uniqueness has infused our Japantown with its own spirit, and I believe that the retention of that spirit within the community will be an essential ingredient to the survival of our Japantown.

Curt: San Jose Japantown has evolved throughout its over 130 years in existence. Businesses and people come and go. The community has gone through cycles of growth and decline several times. Throughout the changes, the neighborhood has remained vital and of service to the residents. The Asian cultures have been the dominant communities in this area with the Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos being the majority during the first century.

With the influx of people during the 1990s and 2000s, the demographics have changed and Japantown is more of a Pan-Asian community. With even more people moving into the huge development on the former Heinlenville property, it’s anyone’s guess as to how the neighborhood will evolve and grow. But change is necessary if a community isn’t going to stagnate and wither away.

Q. Anything else you’d like to add?

Ralph: I would just like to thank JAMsj and the generosity of Jim Nagareda’s aunt, Mie Barbara Nagareda, for reprinting our book. It’s the team’s hope that anyone interested has access to a copy. We’re also very grateful for the exceptional efforts of our designer/producer Janice Oda, who has played an instrumental role in this second printing.

Curt: In addition to what Ralph wrote, I would like to also thank Jim Nagareda, who oversaw both the first and second versions of the book. Jim was the essential connection to the Japantown community and handled all the issues and affairs to make the book a reality.

Don’t miss your chance to get this valuable historic book. Pre-order your copy by July 4 for Early Bird pricing!

By Michelle Yakura

Q&A with Common Ground Exhibit Curators, Connie Young Yu and Leslie Masunaga

Connie Young Yu and Leslie Masunaga are JAMsj guest curators. They are currently working on the new JAMsj exhibit,  "Common Ground: Chinatown and Japantown, San Jose," which will open in September of 2012. They sat down with interviewer, Nancy Yang, to discuss their vision for the exhibit.What inspired you to create this exhibit? Was there anything in your own life experience that drove you to create the exhibit? Connie:  I grew up hearing about my parents and their oral history.  My father was born on Cleveland Avenue (in Heinlenville, which no longer exists. Heinlenville was a Chinatown that would be located within the boundaries of present day San Jose Japantown).  He was in his twenties when he left the 6^th street settlement.  My father was actually there until 1937. So his memories were very strong.He remembered Japantown and having Japanese neighbors. He saw the transformation from Chinatown to Japantown. This is what I think is really exciting. I feel that this site of Cleveland Avenue, of Sixth Street, and Jackson Street  was the birthplace of the first Asian American community in Santa Clara Valley. It was no longer just Chinatown, and no longer just Japantown. More Asians moved in including Filipinos. This was really the first multicultural place.I think that the story (about Chinatown and Japantown) is very inspiring. You want to reach people in a way that they can understand and identify with, because the story is ultimately about people, and it’s about conflict and struggle.It’s important to realize that Chinatown and Japantown existed because of immigration restrictions. In 1972, I wrote this article called “Remembering 1882.” It was about the Chinese Exclusion Act, and there was a lot of research into the anti-Asian laws. There’s a lot of history and background to this site,  which still survives as Japantown, and the roots of that were in the Anti-Asian Laws.There was a fence that was built when Chinatown was new (an eight-foot high fence that was covered with barbed wire originally surrounded Heinlenville).  The fence was locked up every night by Charlie (community leaders hired Charlie, a white security guard who patrolled the area). Gradually, there was no fear of people who could come and burn another  Chinatown down. The fence was to protect the Chinese, he said, so no one could get in, and no one could get out.Leslie:  Basically, I was into the historic preservation of buildings, because they were tearing down all of downtown San Jose. And the building I was in, they tore up under it, so I got into history and got into general local history.The community doesn’t know its history. The individual histories aren’t there, much less the history of Japantown, Northside, and other neighborhoods. While we start developing things, everything gets wiped out. And people keep saying that San Jose has no soul and I say that’s because we keep erasing things. You don’t celebrate. You don’t build on something. You just keep wiping it out, and then it begins to look like everything else.The sad thing about San Jose is that just about all of the Chinese experience has disappeared. There are a lot of Chinese in the Valley, but there’s no particular Chinese place. There’s no town. There’s not even an event center.Now that these communities like Japantown are over 100 years old, it’s important to maintain what’s there.  We want the community to prosper, but we also want to celebrate and commemorate the past and what’s there.That’s great that you have those anecdotes about the interaction between the Japanese and the Chinese communities.Connie: These were Asian American activities, but the cultures of China and Japan are so different, and a perfect example is the theater. Chinese theater  is so elaborate  and Japanese theater is  very different. The Japanese had sumo wrestling, which the Chinese did not. There is an anecdote from a woman that I interviewed. She remembered that her mother said,  “there’s a half naked man down the street!” It  was a sumo wrestler doing an exhibition. They were very shocked because the Chinese never dressed like that.Leslie: This area was the center of the shopping, and the social life, and everything else. Even though all the Asians farmed, they would come here to do the shopping, to go to church, to do things, and some of it’s really interesting is to see where that interplay is. One of the things in the exhibit is a check that my grandfather wrote, but it’s made out to the Tek Wo board. Obviously they were trading with each other and they were buying from different stores, but they were very distinct communities. The interaction  wasn’t necessarily at the personal level; it was not necessarily that people would go to the same churches, or the same social clubs, but there was this community interplay.  Dr. Ishikawa (Dr. Tokio Ishikawa formerly owned the property where JAMsj currently resides) talks about buying lottery tickets from the Chinese that were around. And Grant Elementary School (near Japantown) was a mixed school. You can see the pictures.Why do you think that there is not a greater general awareness of early Chinatowns and Japantowns and how they have contributed to the present day?Leslie: The problem with history in schools, is that they try and cram in the big picture, the mainstream idea, and it tends to be East Coast dominated.Everybody hears about Ellis Island, but nobody hears really about Angel Island. Even  teachers don’t know.  They may know that these (Asian) people came in the 1850’s and that the Chinese worked on the railroads, but that’s it.The problem is, Connie’s book really is about the only book out there that’s about Chinatown in San Jose. So you don’t get the whole picture, you get one little story and then you have to go look for it.  We just don’t have a mechanism where people are learning the history.Connie: I always go back to the Chinese Exclusion Act. When you exclude a people, there’s a disconnect. Their immigration is interrupted. And when it’s interrupted, it becomes a blank story.After the exclusion law was repealed, people had a hard time talking about the past. The exclusion law separated families and excluded Asians from American society. When you’re excluded, you don’t write about it. You have no record, you are invisible. You’re not a citizen – you’re just a non-entity.From 1882 to 1943,  laborers were excluded and their history was obliterated. Most history is written from the point of the victors – the businesses, or the leaders. The laborers are omitted.And you know what happened - that’s why all the Chinatowns faded. It was a cultural center, and it was a home base for agricultural workers. So you have Chinese workers, and then Japanese, and then after when the Japanese were excluded and persecuted, you have the Mexicans, and then the Filipinos. There are people who specialize in labor history, and there are books on labor, but who would want to write about labor, except people who really were affected by it.