Japantown, San Francisco
|
|
Japantown (also known as "Nihonmachi" (ja: 日本町), "Little Osaka," and "J Town") comprises about six square city blocks in the Western Addition in San Francisco. 12,000 Japanese citizens live within the area. The area is home to a large number of Japanese, and some Korean and Chinese, restaurants, supermarkets, indoor shopping malls, hotels, banks, and other shops, including one of the few US branches of the large Kinokuniya bookstores. The main thoroughfare is Post Street. Its focal point is Japan Center, the site of three Japanese oriented shopping centers and the Peace Pagoda.
History
San Francisco has the largest Japantown in California (the only U.S. state to have any), although it is only a shadow of what is once was before World War II. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government took Japanese Americans into custody and interned them in concentration camps, as many large sections of the neighborhood remined vacant. The void was quickly filled by thousands of African Americans who had left the South to find war-time industrial jobs in California. Following the war, some Japanese Americans returned, and the city made efforts to rejuvenate the neighborhood. During the massive redevelopment initiated by Justin Herman in the Western Addition in the 1960s through the 1980s, large numbers of African Americans were pushed west towards the Fillmore District, east towards the Tenderloin, or south towards Hunters Point where the majority of the city's African American population reisdes today, while many Japanese returned, followed by new Japanese immigrants as well as investment from the Japanese Government and Japanese companies.
Some observers have speculated that this was due to a racist preference on the part of the whites who ran the city for Japanese Americans over African Americans, and a lingering sense of liberal guilt over internment.
See also
- Japantown for other Japanese neighborhoods
- Japanese American internment
- Neighborhoods of San Francisco