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, and auctioned off most of their property. Obviously, this had a devastating impact on the neighborhood.

During the war, thousands of African Americans left the South to find industrial jobs in California. As a prominent town and port city, San Francisco had many such jobs. Since Japantown had essentially been depopulated, many African Americans settled in Japantown. Following the war, many Japanese Americans returned, and the city made efforts to rejuvenate the neighborhood. 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. Today a thriving African American neighborhood, centered along Fillmore Street, borders Japantown. This neighborhood was subjected to attempts to "revitalize" it that many inhabitants considered racist, and successfully resisted. This struggle is often linked to the reJapanification of Japantown. Today there is some degree of tension between many African Americans and Japanese Americans in the area.

See also

• Japantown for other Japanese neighborhoods
• Japanese American internment
• Neighborhoods of San Francisco

External links

• http://www.sfjapantown.org/