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Immigration & Citizenship - United States - California

California

"In collaboration with three other museums, we documented the resettlement experiences of Japanese Americans after their incarceration in internment camps--roughly the time period between 1945 and 1965--in four different geographic areas: Chicago, Los Angeles, the Santa Clara Valley, and San Diego. The Japanese American Resource Center/Museum was in charge of documenting resettlement in the Santa Clara Valley."
"This award winning collection is comprised of over 5,000 documents, photographs, artifacts and exhibits materials housed in the California State University, Sacramento Library, Department of Special Collections and University Archives. ... The Collection chronicles the story of Japanese Americans in Northern California from 1869 through post World War II and continuing present day issues."
"The South Bay History Project, organized by the South Bay Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, (SBJACL) seeks to preserve the history of Japanese American settlement in the greater South Bay community. These communities include, but are not limited to: Torrance, Gardena, Hawthorne, Wilmington, Palos Verdes, the Beach cities, Carson and San Pedro. The Project has conducted oral history interviews so that people can learn to understand and appreciate the complexities of the contributions made by Japanese American pioneers -- people who farmed the land, worked in industry, and continue to thrive in the community today."
Article posted to the website "ModelMinority: A Guide to Asian American Empowerment", describing the South Bay Historical Project.
Rep. Matsui's remarks in the U.S. House of Representatives honoring the Aichi Kenjin Kai, a social and cultural institution then celebrating its 100th anniversary in northern California. "At this time in history [1897], there was no welfare plan offered either by the Federal or State governments to care for [seasonal workers] when they fell ill or died. As such, this community of immigrants determined that it was necessary to establish an organization which would care for their fellow countrymen should they fall ill and assist their families when they passed away."
This collection of 29 videocassettes, documenting Japanese Americans in California's San Joaquin Valley, was donated to California State University, Fresno, by the Central California District Council of the Japanese American Citizens League in 2003.
Excerpt: "This essay examines the origins, goals, and practice of the Nisei Week festival in the crucial decade before World War II. As the largest on-going Japanese celebration of its day, Nisei Week was a critical venue for rearticulating the dominant meanings of race. Its spectacles, performances, festive contests, and celebratory speeches were festive, yet serious responses to the anti-Japanese sentiment that constrained and always threatened to doom the ethnic community. In 1934 the leadership of Japanese immigrants (Issei) entrusted the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), an unproven group of second generation businessmen and professionals, to design a festival that would present a harmonious blending of East and West. By joining Japanese dance, music, and cultural and martial arts exhibits with a parade, beauty pageant, and other American traditions, the young JACLers portrayed the Nisei as exotic, yet safe Americans, willing to use their bi-cultural identity to advance relations between the United States and Japan. But the growing rift between the two nations, exacerbated by Japan’s aggressions in China, put the political costs of this bi-culturalism at odds with its benefits as a marketing device for the Depression-weary enclave. As war loomed in the Pacific, Nisei Week’s leaders retreated to the seemingly safe-harbor of American patriotism. The internment order, however, was a clear indication that the festival, and the JACL’s larger loyalty campaign, failed to assuage the general mistrust of Japanese Americans."
This paper, presumably written by Oyama ca. 1927 while a student at the University of Southern California, documents over 20 literary, athletic, and religious associations for young Japanese and Japanese-American men in Southern California.
Brief history of the immigration of Japanese to California's Imperial Valley, from the 1904 arrival of migrant agricultural laborers, to a peak of 2,300 people in 1930, to fewer than 200 by 1990.
Brief introduction to the role of Angel Island in Japanese immigration; includes a profile of Hisayo Yoshino Makimoto, who emigrated in 1912 to marry an Issei farmer in Loomis, California.
Prize-winning essay from a competition to select and publish the best expository writing produced by undergraduates at the University of California, Davis. Contestants must be undergraduates whose work was written for a UC Davis course during the given academic year.
From the Writer's Comment: "When I got the term paper assignment which asked me to compare two groups or individuals that had sought out the California dream, I knew right away what I wanted to do: tell the story of the Chinese and Japanese immigrants. More specifically, I wanted to tell their story in terms of their communities. After all, what the Chinese and Japanese immigrants faced in California — racism, discrimination, and oppression — they faced together, with their communities."

Coloma

The first Japanese settlement in the United States, established in 1869 by John Henry Schnell along with 22 Japanese settlers from Aizu-Wakamatsu in Fukushima Prefecture. Located in El Dorado County's Gold Hill (near modern Coloma), the colony only lasted a few years, scattering after the drought of 1871.

Los Angeles

"Bronzeville in downtown Los Angeles existed for about three short years in the 1940s. The area known as Little Tokyo transformed into the African American enclave of Bronzeville during World War II after Japanese Americans were evicted from their West Coast homes and placed into United States confinement camps."
This website contains extensive articles and archival resources that document the transition of Los Angeles' Little Tokyo district during and after World War II.
  • "Terminal Island". In: Five Views: An Ethnic History Site Survey for California. California Department of Parks and Recreation, Office of Historic Preservation: 1988.
Furusato poster
Furusato poster
"In 1941 the Japanese American fishing community of Terminal Island in San Pedro, California, lost everything when forced out of their homes and sent to internment camps. Experience the spirit of the Terminal Islanders as they recall their idyllic childhood days and celebrate the unique blend of Japanese and American cultures, and their strong connection to the village they call Furusato -- Home Sweet Home."
The web site for this film includes an interactive photomosaic (used for the poster image) composed of over 1,200 historic and family photographs.
Oral histories of 10 individuals associated with the Japanese American community on Terminal Island in the Long Beach harbor area.
"The Los Angeles Comprehensive Bibliographic Database (LACBD) publishes in one comprehensive electronic edition the Los Angeles and its Environs in the Twentieth Century: A Bibliography of a Metropolis (Nunis, 1973), along with its sequel (Rudd,1996). Together they constitute the most comprehensive and useful bibliography for the study of Los Angeles. They include approximately 15,000 bibliographic records on Los Angeles and its environs, complete with detailed indexes, covering the period from 1900 to 1990."
Use the search interface to enter search terms such as "Japanese," "Nisei," "Sansei," "Yonsei," "Kibei," and "Little Tokyo".
"These are the Ryono's of Terminal Island: San Pedro, California, originally from Taiji, Japan."
Family albums and stories from the Ryono family, with marriage links to the Oka, Shibuya, and Enomoto families. Includes photographs from their internment at Manzanar.

Monterey

  • モンテレー日系人の歴史 (Part 1 / Part 2)　（日本語）

San Diego

  • Donald H. Estes, South Bay Monogatari: Tales of the South Bay Nikkei Community. Vol. 5 in the series Chula Vista -- The Early Years. San Diego: Tecolote Publications, 1996.
Jonathan W. MacLeod, Review. The Journal of San Diego History 43, no. 2 (Spring 1997).
"The scope of the accounts about the South Bay Nikkei and the author's succinct commentaries, presented chronologically, range widely. Topics related to the Issei (first generation of Japanese residents of the US) include: a demographic profile of the earliest immigrants in the late-19th and early-20th centuries; the complexities of arranged marriages; efforts to establish farms, businesses, and community institutions; and the surge of European-American nativism undergirded by racist ideology, leading to restrictive legislation."

San Jose

"The Japanese American Museum of San Jose (JAMsj) preserves and disseminates the culture and history of Japanese Americans, with a special focus on the Santa Clara Valley."

Santa Cruz

Excerpt: "No records are known to exist that precisely pinpoint the date that the Japanese came to the Pajaro Valley. It is known that twelve Japanese laborers came to the area sometime in 1892, first to work at a sawmill and later at an hops farm.There is no way to know their thoughts, their dreams or their fears. We don't even have their names. But just imagine for a moment what it must have been like for them in a beautiful, rich land filled with promise - but completely alien in every aspect, for until 1885, few Japanese had ever set foot in America. But Japan's emigration restrictions were eased that year, and young men came seeking their fortune here - as so many did from around the world."
Excerpt: "This short history of the Watsonville Japanese-American Citizens League has been prepared to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the organization's founding in 1934. For fifty of the almost one hundred years that immigrants from Japan and their descendants have lived and worked in the Pajaro Valley, the leadership of that community has come from the American-born generation (Nisei), and their primary organization, the JACL. Though the name of the organization changed over the years and it was inactive during the community's World War II internment in Arizona, the Watsonville Japanese -American Citizens League played a vital role in the history of the Japanese community in the Pajaro Valley."
"This is a collection of quotations and full-text articles from local newspapers from 1941 to 1946. The collection traces the events impacting the lives of the Japanese, Japanese-American, Italian, and (to a lesser extent) German residents in Santa Cruz County, California, because of Executive Order 9066."

The Japanese YWCA in San Francisco

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