Japanese American Community

In the 1890s, Japanese immigrants started to settle in Oakland, California, building a community of more than 1,500 by the 1910s. This dramatic increase in growth was largely due to refugees from the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake moving across the Bay. Oakland's continued growing with a variety of commercial and professional businesses, as well as cultural, educational, recreational and religious organizations.

The Japanese American population of Oakland was nearly 1,800 at the beginning of WWII, one of the largest in California. This population was abruptly uprooted by Executive Order 9066, ordering the relocation and imprisonment of Japanese Americans who lived near the west coast. Signed by president Franklin Delano Roosevelt on February 19th, 1942, it forced thousands of innocent people to give up their homes, jobs, and lives.

Links and References

• Japantown Oakland Landscape of Change

• History - the Buddhist Church of Oakland

• About - The National Japanese American Historical Society

• National Japanese American Historical Society - National Veterans

• Sho-Chiku-Bai: Japanese-American Congregationalists

• Japanese American History: An A-To-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present

• Japanese American Internment During World War II

• Amid century of change, Oakland’s Buddhist Church serves as point of continuity for Japanese-Americans OaklandNorth

• "I Am An American" (East Bay Dislocations) photographs of the effects of forced relocation on Japanese Americans during WWII

• California Japantowns: Oakland