By Dianne Fukami

(This is part of our ongoing series, Lost Kinjo- a look at the more than 40 Japanese communities that disappeared after World War II. It is supported by funding from the California Public Library Civil Liberties Project and the Takahashi Family Foundation. This is part 2 of our story about Oakland. You can find part 1 here: Lost Kinjo-Oakland once had 2 Japantowns. Now there are none.)     

On the website Topaz Stories, Harue Hirai Minamoto, an employee of the Immigrations and Naturalization Service, wrote of her experience on her first day at work after the Pearl Harbor attack: “On Monday, December 8, I was at my desk at the Immigration and Naturalization Service on Silver Avenue in San Francisco and I was greeted by a tirade by an employee whom I thought was a good friend of mine, who shouted that I must’ve known that the Japs were going to bomb Pearl Harbor, and the nerve I had coming into work.”

The Japanese Americans were staunchly loyal to America and there was never any reports of espionage or sabotage.

Jean Shiraki Gize remembered: “I can remember Mother saying that she was superintendent of the school, the Sunday school at West Tenth Episcopal Church in Oakland. And so anyway, this was pre-World War II and she had made the comment that they would not send relief and help to Japan. We were Americans so I don’t know, I guess this was her feeling, you know.”

The iconic Dorothea Lange photo of a sign proclaiming “I Am An American” was hung in the Wanto Co. store by Karen Shigematsu Hashimoto’s uncle, Tatsuro Masuda, who worked at the store. He, like many other Japanese Americans in California, believed that by moving to the interior of the state away from the coast, they could avoid the concentration camps. That plan did not work, as the forced removal orders were expanded to include the entire state and the Masuda family having fled Oakland to Fresno, eventually ended up incarcerated at Gila River in Arizona

John Minamoto’s maternal Hirai grandparents were caught in a different type of situation and were separated during the war. He told AsAmNews that while his grandfather stayed behind in Oakland to tie up loose ends before being forced to leave, his grandmother moved to Central California to wait for him. But he was unable to join her and was ordered to the Topaz incarceration site in Utah, while she was assigned to Gila River in Arizona. Art Imagire’s family closed the dressmaking shop and moved to Reno, Nevada in an effort to avoid being incarcerated; they never moved back to Oakland.

In the weeks and days before their forced removal, the residents of the Oakland Japantowns worked feverishly to prepare for their forced eviction. Those who owned homes tried to find friends who would take care of their houses and possessions until they returned. Others were welcome to store their possessions in the Japanese churches: the West Tenth Methodist Church, the Sycamore Congregational Church, and the Buddhist Church of Oakland.

In all three cases, Caucasian members volunteered to keep an eye on the properties and the possessions to the relief of their fellow congregants. In general, Japanese Americans in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco were assigned to report to a pick-up location in their cities, where buses would take them to the Tanforan Assembly Center, a former racetrack-turned-temporary detainment center, until the construction of the concentration camps could be completed. People living in Oakland were ordered to report to the Wartime Civil Control Administration Control Station located at 1117 Oak Street and restricted to bring only what they could carry.

Dorothea Lange photos taken in Oakland in May 1942 reflect the pathos and confusion felt by the Japanese Americans, still unsure of where they would be bussed to and not knowing they would be incarcerated in the Utah desert of the Topaz Relocation Center for as long as three years.

Fred Korematsu decided he would not comply with the orders to evacuate and report to Tanforan along with his brothers and parents, who had to abandon their Oakland nursery and livelihood. In a 1996 interview for the Densho archive, he discussed his reasons: “…mainly because I had a Caucasian girlfriend, and we were going steady for almost three years. And I assumed that she wouldn’t be able, they wouldn’t accept her in relocation center with the other Asians and myself. Therefore, I decided maybe the best thing to do is to try to leave the state, get into Nevada if possible before the evacuation occurs. So that was my intent, and it never happened.”

FK: …I felt funny knowing that my parents and my friends were interned, and as prisoners of war, that’s what they were, prisoner of war. And here I am, you know, going to work. I saw in the paper that they’re, they’re supposed to be all interned, all “Japs” were interned. There wasn’t any in, in the streets anymore. And I didn’t feel guilty, I just said, “Well, I’m just gonna go to work and think about my work and how I’m living day to day until something does happen.” LB: Were you afraid of being arrested? FK: No, I wasn’t, because I didn’t feel that I was, I did anything wrong. And if anybody did wrong, it was the law. Because I figured it was unconstitutional what they were doing.

About two months after his family had left for Tanforan, Korematsu was arrested, spent time in the county jail, transferred to the Presidio Stockade in San Francisco, then transported to Tanforan to rejoin his family, who eventually were transported to the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah, like many other Japanese Americans from the Bay Area.

During the war, Japanese Americans were able to request passes to leave the camps as long as they did not return to the West Coast. Generally, it was the unmarried and young adults who took advantage of the opportunity, many attending colleges in the Midwest or East Coast. John Minamoto’s father left Topaz to take a job in hospital administration in Philadelphia, with his young family following him afterward with help from the American Friends Service Committee, better known as the Quakers. Once she was permitted to return to the West Coast, Mrs. Minamoto went back home to Oakland alone with her children, since her husband had been drafted into the Army from Philadelphia.

For the duration of the war, the West Tenth Methodist Church had shutdown Meader Hall, the educational building, to store members’ possessions while they were imprisoned. When the Japanese Americans were allowed to return home, Bob Utsumi, who was a member of the church, talked about the role the it played in helping the returnees: “John Yamashita and Ish Isokawa, a friend from church, returned to Oakland in February of 1945 to organize a hostel for Japanese Americans who were returning to Oakland area and to ship the property that had been stored there when Japanese American members of the Oakland Japanese Methodist Church (at 797 10th Street) were first detained in spring of 1942. The property had been cared for by Lee Mullis, a White member of the church. The War Relocation Authority entered into an agreement with John where the WRA would give them cots and mattresses for a specific period to be used to help resettle Japanese Americans.”

In an essay, “After Internment: Oakland 1945,” Karen Tei Yamashita, daughter of John Yamashita, noted that about 135 families left their possession stored at the church and in the next year and a half since returning to Oakland, some 3,000 people would pass through the church preparing to resume their lives.

In her Topaz Stories article, Grace Saito Mori Tom, who was born in Oakland, expressed the irony of leaving Topaz, having no home to return to, and how and she and her family although now free back in California, had to once again share a single room albeit at the Sycamore Congregational Church.

Oakland Buddhist Church members were also able to store their personal belongings there during the war. Like Lee Mullis did for the West Tenth Methodist Church, Mr. Cos Loustalot volunteered to watch over the Buddhist church property and the stored belongings during the nearly four years the Japanese Americans were gone. Tom Yokomizo told AsAmNews that there were reports that Loustalot had also lent money to the returnees to help them get back on their feet.

Those who had owned homes found that in many cases, their houses had been vandalized and trashed and their possessions stolen during their absence. John Minamoto said that White renters had occupied their family home on Sixth Street and refused to pay. They ended up staying with another family until authorities were able to evict the squatters.

In an article written for the Topaz Stories project online, John’s mother, Harue Minamoto, recalled what it was like to return to her Oakland house and be among the few who had a place to stay: “A widowed, young mother, a total stranger to me, came to the door with two young children begging us for food, beds, linens and pots and pans, and we gave them to her—rusty cots from the basement, dilapidated mattresses—lugging it down the street to a ramshackle house which she was able to rent.

One night, an older Issei woman, an acquaintance of ours, came pleading for shelter and fell on her knees, groveling and crying, and it was a soul-wrenching episode. Naturally, she stayed. Finally, two other Issei couples came to stay as the hostels were closing; and we had a full house.”

Life was not easy in post-war Oakland. In addition to resettling and trying to find housing, returnees had to find jobs or start their businesses from scratch. Many of the older Issei, first-generation Japanese, had aged during their incarceration and didn’t have the energy or youth to restart a business or find an occupation.

Norm Hayashi was the grandson of Hirokichi “Harry” Hayashi, pioneer founder of Hayashi Nursery in Oakland. In an interview with Densho in 2019, he noted what the family faced when they returned: “when we came back from the war, everything was demolished. Every glass in the greenhouse was broken…(everything) was practically destroyed. All the metal was taken out, pipes for salvage, and I guess anything of use was vandalized or taken, plain (stolen). And I think prior to that, before we came back, my uncle came early to get the house in shape, and that was kind of vandalized, too, so he had to do a lot of work.”

Fred Korematsu’s family’s nursery had been neglected and his family had to make repairs and grow their business again. From his 1996 Densho interview: “And the bank held it for us, so we started all over from the foundations, built up the house and, greenhouses and all, all the pipes and things in the nursery was corroded, and we had to fix that, and the boiler house had to be restored again, to be operational and things like that. But the bank was willing to loan us the money, and so we went right back to work, and we finally got that. So we were one of, one of the lucky ones”.

Jean Shiraki Gize’s family found a unique position, staying and working in Los Altos Hill at the Hidden Villa estate of Frank and Josephine Duveneck, who were members of the American Friends Society and social progressives. They eventually moved back to the East Bay. But other former Oakland residents never returned after the war. The Imagire family who closed up the dressmaking shop and moved to Reno ended up staying there. Out of Kishiro and Tomi Yamashita’s seven children, only one returned to Oakland permanently. The Yokomizo family had nine children and only three returned to Oakland. John Minamoto remembers just three Japanese families coming back to the Chinatown area after the war. The incarceration may have helped disperse the Japanese American population throughout the country, but it didn’t help the sustainability of California’s Japantowns.

Those who did return faced challenges and racism. In addition to resettling and trying to find work, Japanese Americans faced racism. Tom Yokomizo remembers he couldn’t get a haircut when he returned; White barbers refused to cut Japanese hair. He also recalled a teacher saying “damn Japas speak Chinese.” Housing continued to be a problem as many landlords refusing to rent to Japanese. Noted attorney Don Tamaki, the son of Iyo Yamashita and grandson of Kichiro and Tomi Yamashita recalled in a 2009 Densho interview, the story his parents told him when they bought a house in a nicer area of Oakland in 1951:

“… the real estate broker who sold them their house ultimately was fired because he had sold the house to a Japanese American. And then there were a group of neighbors who came knocking on the door, basically saying, “You’re not welcome in this neighborhood.”

This was because it was a “White neighborhood.” And my father, of course, was angry about it, but he said, “Make me an offer,” meaning, “You come up with the money. And if you want to get me out of here, buy me out.” And they never did. And so I lived there, and fortunate enough to live in one house until I left for college. And I had, I was oblivious to any of that because the, my neighbors and the kids in the neighborhood, I got along with really well.”

The 1950s and early 1960s marked urban planning decisions that would be the fatal blow to Oakland’s Japantown. The Nimitz Freeway (also known as Interstate 880) was built through West Oakland, cutting through that segment of Japantown. In addition to the homes and businesses that were displaced and razed, the Buddhist Church of Oakland on Sixth Street was declared condemned so that it would legally be forced to find a new location. After considering several options for relocation, church members bought a new parcel at the corner of Ninth and Jackson, three blocks away. Rather than construct a new building, they came up with the idea of cutting the church in half and transplanting the two pieces to Ninth and Jackson, which happened in July 1950 and where it remains today.

Freeway expansion resulted in the eviction of what was renamed the Sycamore Congregational Church of Oakland, then on 27th and Sycamore Streets in West Oakland. In 1957, the church received notice that the State of California would exercise its power of eminent domain to build the 980/24 extension linking the 580 and 880 freeways and demanded the removal of the church. Realizing that many of its members and the Japanese community in West Oakland would be severely impacted, church leaders bought a parcel of land in El Cerrito in 1959 with construction beginning afterward. The last service in Oakland was held in July 1964, after being part of the community for 60 years.

The 1960s saw “redevelopment” sweep the nation with communities of color declared to be part of “urban blight” and targeted for demolition and rebuilding. The Oakland Redevelopment Agency planned to demolition buildings in a 45-block area bordered by Brush and Union Streets and First and Tenth Streets, which included the location of the West Tenth Street Methodist Church, to make way for the Acorn Project, a series of housing projects. The church sold its land in 1967 and in 1968 its members were invited to merge with the Lake Park United Methodist Church, which it did.

Today there is very little evidence of the pre-war Japantown presence in Oakland. The Buddhist Church of Oakland is one of the few physical buildings left that links the history of Japanese Americans. Although some other buildings exist, those businesses have been long taken over by others, especially in the Chinatown area. John Minamoto, who is a longstanding member of the Buddhist Church of Oakland told AsAmNews that there are only 35 Oakland residential addresses among the current congregation. Oakland’s Lost Kinjo story is just but one of many examples of thriving Japantowns in California that exist no more.

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