San Francisco Relocation Guide - Antevia

Japantown (also known as "Nihonmachi", "Little Osaka," and "J Town") comprises
about six square city blocks in the Western Addition in San Francisco. 12,000 of
Japanese ancestry 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, opened
in 1968, the site of three Japanese oriented shopping centers and the Peace Pagoda. The
Peace Pagoda is a five-tiered concrete stupa designed by Japanese architect Yoshiro
Taniguchi and presented to San Francisco by the people of Osaka, Japan.
History
San Francisco has the largest Japantown in California, although it is only a shadow of
what it 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, as many large sections of the neighborhood remained vacant. The
void was quickly filled by thousands of African Americans who had left the South to find
wartime industrial jobs in California. Following the war, some Japanese Americans
returned, and the city made efforts to rejuvenate the neighborhood. During the massive
redevelopment initiated by Justin Herman in the Western Addition in the 1960s through
the 1980s, large numbers of African Americans were pushed west towards the Fillmore
District, east towards the Tenderloin, or south towards Hunters Point where the majority
of the city's African American population resides today, while many Japanese returned,
followed by new Japanese immigrants as well as investment from the Japanese
Government and Japanese companies.
See also
Japantown for other Japanese neighborhoods
Japanese American internment
Neighborhoods of San Francisco
49-Mile Scenic Drive
External links
http://www.sfjapantown.org/
San Francisco/Japantown travel guide from Wikitravel
Google Maps Bird's eye view of the Peace Pagoda.