San Diego's Nihonmachi — Japantown — occupied a few packed blocks near Fifth and Island, in the area now known as the Gaslamp District. By 1940 it held 1,554 residents, three churches, two Japanese language schools, five hotels, fifteen restaurants, eleven markets, two pool halls, six produce stands, three dry cleaners, and a Buddhist temple at 2929 Market Street. More than 35 Nikkei-owned businesses anchored a two-block commercial heart.
It was not large. It was real.
The Japanese American community in San Diego had built its economic life primarily around fishing. Japanese immigrants had arrived in the bay area in the late 1890s, brought the bamboo pole method of tuna fishing, and become central to the industry that made San Diego the Tuna Capital of the World. By 1918, Japanese immigrants owned or operated more than 45 fishing vessels. By 1920, Japanese Americans dominated the tuna fleet. The canneries — Van Camp, Sun Harbor, Westgate — rose along the waterfront, and this neighborhood was where many of the fishermen and their families lived.
On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of persons of Japanese ancestry from military zones that included the entire West Coast. In the spring of 1942, San Diego's Nihonmachi emptied. Families had days to dispose of property they had spent lifetimes accumulating. The boats in the harbor were gone already — the Navy had requisitioned them after Pearl Harbor. The Buddhist temple became a storage facility for belongings the families could not carry. The stores closed. The houses emptied.
The people went to assembly centers and then to internment camps — Poston in Arizona, Manzanar in California's Owens Valley, Heart Mountain in Wyoming. They were held, depending on their age and the war's timeline, for up to three years.
When the camps closed after Japan's surrender in 1945, many San Diego Japanese Americans had no property to return to. Homes had been sold under duress or simply lost. Businesses were gone. The fishing boats, requisitioned by the Navy, were not returned. The neighborhood did not reconstitute itself.
What had been Nihonmachi became part of the general redevelopment of downtown San Diego over the following decades. The Gaslamp Quarter's Victorian buildings — preserved for their architecture — mostly postdate the Japanese American community, or were built by and for other residents of the district. There is no physical monument to Nihonmachi in its former location.
Sources: San Diego History Center, Nihonmachi archives; Japanese American Citizens League, San Diego chapter records; U.S. War Relocation Authority records, 1942–1945.
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