Market Laundry, incorporated in 1909, was located on Myrtle Street in West Oakland. Photo courtesy of Dean Yabuki.

Detail of a map by cartographer Ben Pease showing Japanese American-owned businesses in prewar Berkeley.

by JAMES WOODARD, Hokubei Mainichi

When you think of California’s Japantowns, you probably think of the of the big three: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose. But researchers and activists are working to shed light on the numerous other Japantowns, many in rural California, that were nearly forgotten after the Second World War.

Preserving California’s Japantowns, a statewide project started by the California Japanese American Community Leadership Council, is the first project of its kind to document the many prewar Japantowns across the state.

Researchers chose 43 communities, from El Centro in the far south to Marysville, north of Sacramento. The project’s goal is to reclaim the histories and landscape by identifying and documenting the communities using resources from the Nikkei community, including stories, photos, maps and other memories.

The project was presented to community members on July 23 at Berkeley Methodist United Church.

“We were really excited to find in our backyard these historic resources that we did not realize were formerly Nikkei businesses and associations, that there was so much still standing,” said project manager Jill Shiraki. “I think Berkeley in particular is one of the highest in terms of what still remains in the community.”

The meeting room was filled with Nisei, Sansei and Yonsei descendants of Japanese and Japanese American business owners and community members. Some members of the community explained how they came across pictures and other pieces of information.

Dean Yabuki, whose family ran Market Laundry on Myrtle in West Oakland, showed a collection of photos and explained the challenges his family had running one of the largest laundries on the West Coast.

Many of the photos came from boxes of his grandmother’s belongings that had been largely forgotten in the garage of her home. The pictures included family wedding pictures, business meetings and laundry staff photos. Many of the photos were taken before World War I.

“Market Laundry was organized by people from Okayama, and at the time there were lots of restrictions on the economic lives of Japanese across California,” Yabuki noted as he explained two of the ways Issei used to get around laws barring Asian immigrants from owning land. “One was to put property in the name of their American-born children, or the other mechanism was to incorporate. And for some particular reason Japanese Americans knew about this mechanism and were able to work together and make a corporation, because the corporation would be American-born.”

Many Japanese Americans had to band together in the face of racism and discrimination. State and local ordinances even prevented many Asian immigrants from opening bank accounts, so community cohesion was imperative for survival.

Market Laundry was incorporated in 1909, and like many Japanese-owned and operated businesses at the time, offered dormitory-style lodging for its employees.

Laundries were just one of the varied businesses run by the fledgling Japanese community. Many of the Bay Area’s largest nurseries were once owned and operated by Issei and Nisei; and countless markets, doctor’s offices, repair shops, printing companies, newspapers, and other businesses thrived until 1942, when all persons of Japanese descent on the West Coast were forced into concentration camps.

Yabuki said that as Japanese immigration increased, the competition with white-owned businesses also rose, leading to legislation that specifically targeted Japanese and Japanese Americans.

In 1910 there were numerous proposals before the State Legislature, which prompted President William Howard Taft to ask California Gov. Hiram Johnson to seek moderation. Johnson’s successor, William Stephens, went so far as to order surveillance of Japanese and Japanese Americans.

There was even an Anti-Japanese Laundry League, founded by the San Francisco Building Trades Union in 1908.

Those efforts could not stop the determination of the Issei and Nisei business leaders, who worked all over the East Bay.

Shiraki and project director Donna Graves were surprised at the extent of the Japanese community in the East Bay, especially Oakland, which was spread widely across the city.

“We didn’t realize how large Oakland [Japantown] was, and how spread out it was,” Shiraki elaborated. “It wasn’t just in Chinatown, it was all throughout the city.”

Graves pointed out that the records of the businesses that existed prior to the war were much better maintained in Berkeley than they were in Oakland, where records and photos have been sparse in relation to the size of its Nikkei community.

Researchers have relied heavily on the input of church and community leaders to provide historic documentation, such as archival photos, Japanese business directories, journals, letters and diaries.

During the presentation, Graves asked the audience if anyone was familiar with a number of the buildings and organizations that existed before the war. The input from the community is absolutely essential for the success of the program, as no official records exist for many businesses, especially small or family-run ones that went under as a result of the internment.

The community placed a high value on higher education, Graves said. “Berkeley Nikkei had strong connections to the university. Gaining a college education for any immigrant youth was a considerable accomplishment, and it definitely was for the Nisei.”

Famed painter Chiura Obata, who was a popular professor at UC Berkeley, had a studio on Telegraph Avenue, just below Dwight Way, that he shared with his wife, an accomplished ikebana instructor named Haruko Kohashi. The building still stands, but to most visitors on Telegraph Avenue the building is remembered as the former home of the Blue Nile, a popular Ethiopian restaurant that closed down in 2005.

The site has preservationist Lesley Emmington of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association excited. She hopes to get the building, located at 2727 Telegraph Ave., special landmark status, which could ensure that the building couldn’t be torn down by developers. The owners of the building have been in talks with BAHA.

Berkeley also had restrictive ordinances that limited where people of color could live and own property.

“Grove [now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard] and Dwight was a residential boundary for pretty much anyone of color in Berkeley,” Graves said. “Most people of color couldn’t buy homes east of Grove, which is now MLK, or north of Dwight, but we’ve found businesses actually scattered throughout the city.”

Charles “Wacky” Sumimoto recalled working for his father delivering items for their store in Oakland during the 1930s. He hung out with the Japanese men playing cards, in particular a game from Japan called hana.

“There were a lot of single guys,” Sumimoto said. “I guess that’s why I’m a night owl.”

Sumimoto also remembered how the immigrants from each region of Japan would band together, and would even run undercover banks that would provide loans for growing businesses and communities. Each of the kenjin kai [prefectural associations] would come together for a large picnic in Albany, which provided an outlet for many Nikkei to reconnect with others in neighboring communities.

Many of the buildings have long been forgotten, but subtle reminders shed light on a bygone era, such as the former site of the San Pablo Florist Nursery. The building, at 1806 San Pablo Ave. in Berkeley, looks like a long-abandoned auto repair shop. But behind the shop still stand the remnants of an old fountain and garden that used to be part of the nursery.

Such reminders are not just in the East Bay. The Japantown project has also catalogued sites and businesses in Fresno, Lodi, Pasadena, Watsonville, and dozens of others.

Mapmaker Ben Pease created detailed maps of Nikkei businesses and institutions in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland and Berkeley. He is currently working on updating current maps and making new maps of other Nikkei communities.

To see where these businesses were, visit Japantown map projects at www.japantownatlas.com.

Those interested in the Preserving California’s Japantowns project can contact Shiraki at (510) 277-2164. For more information on upcoming projects, seminars and volunteer training, visit www.californiajapantowns.org.

About Us | Privacy Policy | Contact Us

All text, graphics, articles & photographs: copyright 2006-2008 by Hokubei Mainichi, Inc.; all rights reserved