Lasting Stories
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About this project A California Civil Liberties Public Education Program (CCLPEP) grant of $20,000 will help the Japanese American Museum of San Jose (JAMsj) document the starting or restarting of small businesses in San Jose's Japantown during the resettlement era (1945-1965), when incarcerees returned from camps. What were the major struggles of the small businesspeople and what kind of help did they receive? This is the focus of Lasting Stories: The Resettling of San Jose Japantown, a digital visual history project to be implemented through June 30, 2005. San Jose's Japantown is a unique treasure -- one of three remaining Japantowns in the country. Of the three, it is the least changed by the forces of redevelopment and much of it remains essentially, as it was before World War II. One might ask why it has survived and transformed itself while some 40 others have withered away. Although many in the community and the City of San Jose would like to not only preserve but also expand Japantown, its future is uncertain. In the majority of cases, when the 2nd generation Nisei retire or pass on, there are few willing 3rd or 4th generation (Sansei, Yonsei) standing in the wings to take over the businesses, which are a crucial part of Japantown or Nihonmachi. Teams from JAMsj as well as Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project will be collaborating on this project, which aims to capture the stories of the postwar resettlement of this important "home" to local Nikkei. Densho is a prominent organization in Seattle, which has been collecting and digitizing visual histories of former incarcerees for some seven years. For this project, Densho will train JAMsj interviewers and provide technical details of videotaping, processing, archiving and presenting the visual histories on JAMsj's and Densho's websites. A compact disc of the interviews will be produced and will serve as a supplement to presentations at the Museum as well as Speakers' Bureau. If you have ideas or historical information about the resettlement era in San Jose Japantown, call Aggie Idemoto at the Museum, (408) 294-1657 or email Aggie Idemoto Interviews are being conducted now. The final interview list will be posted after all interviews have been conducted. Please come visit this site again soon. Aggie Idemoto, Project Director
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