User:AAHistoryLD/Little Tokyo, Los Angeles

History

Origins: 1880s

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 played a pivotal role in the first large wave of Japanese Immigration to the United States as the Japanese were heavily recruited to serve as 'cheap labor' in place of the now excluded Chinese Laborers. One of the people influenced by this first wave of Japanese Immigration was Hamanosuke Shigeta, a Japanese Seaman, who settled in southeast Los Angeles, an area which would eventually become "Little Tokyo". There Shigeta established the first Japanese-owned business in LA, Kame Restaurant, along the East First Street. Attracted by the restaurant and nearby demands for labor, other Japanese immigrant men followed suite as they settled along East First Street in nearby boarding houses. To house the wave of new immigrants coming to the Little Tokyo area, early Immigrants also opened more boarding houses. The first Japanese boarding house in Los Angeles was established by Sanjuro Mizuno who opened the Santa Fe Boarding House in 1898 to cater to Japanese laborers.

Initial Development: Late 1890s to 1930s

By the early 1900s the Japanese population in the "Little Tokyo" Area had reached a number of around 3000. This Japanese population in the nearby area also jumped to 10000 following the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake which convinced many Japanese to move from San Francisco to Los Angeles. In 1907, The Gentleman's Agreement was signed between Japan and the United States in which Japan voluntarily restricted the emigration of Japanese Laborers, allowing only families of current residents to immigrate, in exchange for the United States to ensure no discrimination against the Japanese people in the US. The implementation of the agreement led to an influx of women who joined family or husbands as new brides in the "Little Tokyo" area. As a result, "Little Tokyo" saw a growth in community and establishment of a commercial district. By 1908, around 90 Japanese-run boarding houses could be found throughout Los Angeles.

In 1909 the area of "Little Tokyo" was described as "bounded by San Pedro, First and Requena streets and Central Avenue. The Los Angeles Times added: "It has a population of about 3,500 Japanese ... there are 10,000 Japanese in the city who make this section their rendezvous."

The area was a magnet for immigrating Japanese until the Exclusion Act of 1924 halted any further migration. Shops were along First Street, and vegetable markets were along Central Avenue to the south. Japanese Americans were a significant ethnic group in the vegetable trade, due to the number of successful Japanese American truck farms across Southern California.

Institutions, Associations, and Establishments

The East First Street area is where the first Japanese institutions, associations, and establishments were founded in Los Angeles as Issei or first generation Japanese immigrants began to congregate in the area.

The first Japanese-founded religious institution founded in the "Little Tokyo" area was the "Japanese Episcopal Mission of Los Angeles", now Century United Methodist Church, founded in June 1896 by a group of 5 issei from southern Japan. Other religious institutions continued to be founded: the Koyasan Buddhist Temple (1912), Japanese Union Church (1923), and Hompa Hongwaji Buddhist Temple (1925).

The growing population in "Little Tokyo" was supplemented by the establishment of primary, secondary, and trade schools. A large amount of trade schools in the little Tokyo area were sewing schools. The largest was the Rafu Yossai Gakuen which taught sewing skills to Issei women.

During this time period various newspapers catered towards Japanese Americans in Los Angeles were founded. The first Japanese newspaper in the United States is Rafu Shimpo, which was founded in "Little Tokyo" in 1903 and continues to operate.

Founded during this time were rotating savings and credit associations known as tanomoshiko which provided funding towards emerging business ventures in "Little Tokyo".

Community Leaders in the 1920s and 1930s established local entities of prominent Japanese American associations such as the Central Japanese Association, Japanese-American Citizen's League (JACL), and the Japanese American Chamber of Commerce. Concurrently, these leaders worked with Japan to establish kenjinkai or mutual aid societies each associated to one of the Japanese Prefectures. These associations would provide mutual aid and social opportunities to Japanese families that had immigrated from the same prefecture represented by the association. By 1940, the breadth of kenjinkai covered 40/46 Japanese Prefectures.

World War II

In 1941, Little Tokyo reached its peak population with approximately 30,000 Japanese Americans living in Little Tokyo. The 1941 Pearl Harbor bombing brought an end to the increase in Japanese American population in Little Tokyo. The incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II emptied Little Tokyo. For a brief time, the area became known as Bronzeville as African Americans and also Native Americans and Latinos moved into the vacated properties and opened up nightclubs, restaurants, and other businesses. Beginning in 1942, after the city's Japanese population was rounded up and "evacuated" to inland concentration camps, a large number of African Americans from the South moved to Los Angeles to find work in the labor-starved defense industry. Its share in the Second Great Migration almost tripled Little Tokyo's pre-war population, with some 80,000 new arrivals taking up residence there. Prohibited from buying and renting in most parts of the city by restrictive covenants, the area soon became severely overcrowded. A single bathroom was often shared by up to 40 people and one room could house as many as 16; people frequently shared "hot beds," sleeping in shifts. Poor housing conditions helped spread communicable illnesses like tuberculosis and venereal disease. Crimes like robberies, rapes, and hit-and-run accidents increased, and in May and June 1943 Latino and some African American residents of Bronzeville were attacked by whites in the Zoot Suit race riots. In 1943, officials bowed to pressure from frustrated residents and proposed building temporary housing in nearby Willowbrook, but the majority-white residents of the unincorporated city resisted the plans. In 1944, 57 Bronzeville buildings were condemned as unfit for habitation and 125 ordered repaired or renovated; approximately 50 of the evicted families were sent to the Jordan Downs housing complex. In 1945, many defense industry jobs disappeared and the workers moved elsewhere in search of new employment. Others were pushed out when Japanese Americans began to return and white landlords chose not to renew leases with their wartime tenants.

Post World War II

Following the War, many previous Japanese Residents returned to the Little Tokyo area to continue manage businesses by purchasing Bronzeville business leases. Albeit smaller, a commercial core managed still managed to exist in Little Tokyo. However, due to lack of housing in Little Tokyo, many Japanese Americans returning from the camps moved into apartments and boarding houses in the neighborhoods surrounding the downtown Los Angeles area. Notably, Boyle Heights, just east of Little Tokyo, had a large Japanese American population in the 1950s (as it had before the internment) until the arrival of Mexican and Latino immigrants replaced most of them. The post-war Japanese American population in little Tokyo had become only one-third of its pre-war population.

Many Issei and Nisei who had previously owned large businesses or were heavily involved in agriculture now returned with little resources to work in civil service or other simple jobs. Concurrently, a large redevelopment plan was put in place to be enacted in the early 1950s, but due to a lack of state funding and wealth in the Japanese American community following three years of internment, the plan fell to stagnation.

Following the construction of the Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters construction in 1953, Little Tokyo's commercial area shrunk by one fourth of its original size. Futhermore, 1000 residents were displaced to other parts of Los Angeles. Similar urban development would continue in the 1960s and 1970s further shrinking the extent of the coverage of the Little Tokyo commercial district.

1970s to Present

In the 1970s, a redevelopment movement started as Japanese corporations expanded overseas operations and many of them set up their US headquarters in the Los Angeles area. Named the Little Tokyo Project, this movement resulted in the opening of several new shopping plazas and hotels , along with branches of some major Japanese banks. Although this redevelopment resulted in many new buildings and shopping centers, there are still some of the original Little Tokyo buildings and restaurants, especially along First Street. The Little Tokyo Project would transform the Little Tokyo area into its present version: an area bounded by Los Angeles Street, Alameda Street, Third Street, and half a block north from First Street.

During the 1970s and 1980s, artists began to move into nearby aging warehouse spaces in the area, forming a hidden community in the industrialized area. Al's Bar, Gorky's, the Atomic Cafe, and LA Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) are some well-known sites.

Land use has been a contentious issue in Little Tokyo due to its history, the proximity to the Los Angeles Civic Center, the role of Los Angeles as a site of business between Japan and America, and the increasing influx of residents into the Arts District. Unlike a traditional ethnic enclave, there are relatively few Japanese residents in the area because of evacuation and internment. The Japanese American community was politicized by the internment and subsequent Redress and Reparations effort. This politicization, along with the global and local growth of overseas Japanese investment, has assured that Little Tokyo has continued to exist as a tourist attraction, community center, and home to Japanese American senior citizens and others.

The current site of Parker Center, the Los Angeles Police Department's former headquarters, was the original site of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist temple. The south edge of the block where Parker Center stands was part of the First Street business strip of shops. The warehouses and new condominiums to the east of Little Tokyo were once residential areas of the district. The Weller Court mall was opposed by some people in the community because it redeveloped a strip of family-owned small businesses. Community activists established First Street as a historic district in 1986. In 2004, they helped reopen the Far East Cafe, an acknowledged community hub.

Now, Los Angeles's Little Tokyo continues to develop and change with the general development of the greater Los Angeles Area through ordinances, construction, coalitions, etc.