The Death of Japantown

I'm a little late to this one but last month the San Francisco Chronicle published a superb story map documenting the effect of America's internment of Japanese American citizens in World War II on San Francisco's Japantown District.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This order led to the forced removal and internment of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly taken from their homes and sent to internment camps. During internment Japanese American families lost homes, businesses, and farms and many were forced to sell their property at a fraction of its value.

In Here's How SF's Japantown Was Devastated by Mass Incarceration the Herald has used historical census data to map out the racial mix of Japantown before and after World War II. In 1940 around 1,340 residents in the 20 square block of Japantown were of Japanese ancestry. In the 1950 census only around 730 Japanese people remained in Japantown.

Detailed census records from the 1950 census were only released in 2022. So it is only now possible to accurately compare the number of Japanese American residents living in Japantown before and after the war. Alongside the huge reduction of Japanese American citizens there was a similar reduction in Japanese American owned businesses. According to the Chronicle's research there were 350 Japanese American owned businesses in Japantown in 1941. By 1952 there were only 200 remaining.