Sacramento's Historic Japantown by Kevin Wildie

Author:Kevin Wildie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

A Japanese American family prepares for incarceration. Courtesy Center for Sacramento History, Eugene Hepting Collection, 1985/024/1864.

Lion Drug Store’s “Sayonara” sale preparing for incarceration. Courtesy Center for Sacramento History, Eugene Hepting Collection, 1985/024/1871.

Matsuda Brothers “bargain sale” preparing for incarceration. Courtesy Center for Sacramento History, Eugene Hepting Collection, 1985/024/1869.

Yorozu closing sale preparing for incarceration, corner of Fourth Street and Capitol Avenue. Courtesy Center for Sacramento History, Eugene Hepting Collection, 1985/024/1877.

The local Church Federation promised the owners of the hotels (there were fourteen or fifteen Japanese owners) that the Federation would look after the business, but the day before we were evacuated, [the Federation] changed its mind and could not take care of the hotels as they promised previously. Subsequently, the hotel owners had only one day to find buyers for furniture, bedding, and supplies. This was a buyer’s market and they probably bought all the things dirt cheap.189

A farmer in Broderick, just outside Sacramento, sold his $200 stove for $15 and sold his radio, washing machine, tools and appliances at similarly reduced prices. As he said, “We had to sell everything so cheaply that it was just like throwing things away.”190 Such flurry of commercial activity by the Japanese American community caused one local reporter to write:

One of the complaints of the evacuation is the throwing on the market at low prices the household effects, automobiles, and other belongings of these sons of Nippon, whether alien or American born. The disruption locally has been widespread and some weeks will pass before adjustments can be made and the changes be absorbed.

We hear stories of Sacramentans buying up the belongings of the Japanese and profiting rich thereby. We hear other stories of markets for certain goods being gutted during the changeover and trade in them virtually brought to a standstill. [However,] the evacuation is a military necessity. Through no choice of its own, California has been made combat area and for the safety of its citizens the people of Japanese origin must be moved away.191

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