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Driving down Capitol Mall toward Tower Bridge, you can’t miss splashes of paint decorating fencing around a vacant lot.
A group called Reclaim Sacramento Japantown is creating a mural this month to uplift the history of Japanese Americans who were displaced from downtown — twice. Jim Tabuchi, the facilitator for the group, said they hope Sacramentans and tourists alike will take photos in front of the mural and scan a QR code to read about the community.
“The mural is basically trying to reel people in, to encourage them to learn more about what Sacramento Japantown was,” Tabuchi said.
The design for a mural dedicated to the history of Sacramento Japantown.Courtesy of Karen Tsugawa
Nearly 70 years ago, the Sacramento City Council approved a plan to demolish Japantown. Council members declared seizing property through eminent domain was necessary in order to carry out the Capitol Mall Redevelopment Project. The city planned to level a roughly 15-block area to make way for new offices, businesses and a parking structure.
The ordinance approved on July 22, 1954 claimed blight in downtown’s multiracial West End neighborhood had “detrimental effects upon the public health, safety and general welfare of the people of this state and this city.” But blight was an imaginary problem, said William Burg, a historian and the president of Preservation Sacramento’s board.
“Blight is an imaginary disease of buildings that is caused by the race and ethnicity of the people in the buildings, and presumably the only cure is a wrecking ball,” Burg said. “It was essentially a term used to shut off discussion that, oh, we can't save these neighborhoods. They're blighted and the only solution is to move the people out.”
The federal government had forcibly removed Japanese Americans from the area only 12 years before the council approved the redevelopment plan. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942, authorizing the incarceration of about 110,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast in centers mostly located inland. At least 7,723 people from the Sacramento region were incarcerated.
In 1943, the council passed a resolution opposing Japanese Americans returning to the city, calling them undesirable. Still, some returned to Japantown after the end of World War II and tried to rebuild their lives.
But redevelopment forced them out for a final time and by 1961, only two buildings from the former Japantown remained, including what’s now the Nisei War Memorial. A monument outside the memorial was the only physical educational display about the ethnic enclave, until now.
Roseville-based artist Karen Tsugawa, whose paternal grandparents grew up in the Sacramento area and were incarcerated at Tule Lake, designed the mural going up on 4th Street and Capitol Mall. She only learned about Sacramento Japantown earlier this year.
“It’s been an honor to both do the project and then just connect with so many people, especially fellow Japanese Americans who I just haven’t ever gotten to meet before,” Tsugawa said.
Artist Karen Tsugawa applies paint to a sponge in Downtown Sacramento on Friday, May 10, 2024.Kristin Lam/CapRadio
Artist Karen Tsugawa references her design for a mural honoring Sacramento Japantown’s history in Downtown Sacramento on Friday, May 10, 2024.Kristin Lam/CapRadio
Tsugawa plans to add eight panels of illustrations based on photos of Japantown taken between the 1940s and 60s. Some feature Japanese American-owned businesses, while another shows a dancing festival held by a Buddhist church. The art style is based on hanafuda, a type of Japanese playing cards.
When the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, which owns the vacant lot, eventually takes down the fencing, Tsugawa said she will be able to remove the panels. Unlike Japantown, they won’t be destroyed.
The group plans to hold a ribbon cutting ceremony for the mural on May 29 and showcase it during the Asian American Pacific Islander Night Market on May 31.
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