top of page

THE HISTORY

In 1942, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps around the United States. Prior to this, the neighborhood of Little Tokyo had been a flourishing community within Downtown Los Angeles that was home to most of Southern California's Japanese population. Music, art, and Japanese culture thrived, until this population was targeted and forcibly displaced. This gave way to the emptying of a once homogenous neighborhood, leading to the development of Bronzeville and the presence of the African American community in Little Tokyo while the Japanese were absent. Breakfast clubs and Los Angeles jazz came alive while the Japanese Americans maintained their elements of music and culture in the form of traditional song and dance while incarcerated. Their return to Little Tokyo following the releasing of internment camp populations around 1945 instigated a new melding of cultures, artistic spaces such as the Matoba family's punk rock Atomic Cafe, and musical styles that have reshaped and persisted over the following decades, resulting in what Little Tokyo has become today.

THE PODCAST

Utilizing KXSC, USC's independent student run radio station, I broadcasted a live show available on the airwaves at 1560 AM and online at KXSC.org on Thursdays at 6 PM pst during the Fall 2019 semester. Through this show, I engaged on a mission  along with my listeners to explore the underscores of Japanese A merican Internment during the war and post-war eras through the Little Tokyo Japanese American community’s interaction and transaction of creative and artistic space between other Los Angeles communities. From the African American community’s development of Bronzeville “breakfast clubs” throughout Little Tokyo while the Japanese were incarcerated, to the establishment of the Atomic Cafe at 422 East First Street by the Matoba family in the aftermath, we will utilize music as a signifier of political and social circumstances and explore the sounds and archives a context in time and place largely forgotten. In paying homage to the artists, musicians, and creators who kept culture and community alive throughout Little Tokyo’s persisting existence, each week will uncover a new piece of understanding and music evident to this Downtown district’s history.

An introduction to the show's direction and a heading of the questions that guided the intended research.

An exploration of the traditional music styles that prevailed within the Little Tokyo's Japanese American community prior to and during the internment period.

An exploration of the jazz scene that developed during the Bronzeville era of Little Tokyo when the African American community began to inhabit the area while the Japanese were interned.

A conclusion and exploration of the contemporary presence of music in Little Tokyo through spaces such as the Matoba family's Atomic Cafe, where different Little Tokyo communities and their music was bridged and brought together into how it appears today.

WORKS REFERENCED

​

​

  1. deGuzman, Jean-Paul - Japanese American Resettlement in Postwar America: The Los Angeles Experience (2016)

  2. Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment (1973) 

  3. Kun, Josh - To Live and Dine in L.A.: Menus and the Making of the Modern City Hardcover (2015)

  4. Kurashige, Lon - Japanese American Celebration and Conflict (2002)

  5. Little Tokyo Historical Society - Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo (2010)

  6. Marmorstein, Gary - Central Avenue Jazz: Los Angeles Black Music of the Forties (1988) 

  7. Simpson, Caroline Chung - An Absent Presence: Japanese Americans in Postwar American Culture, 1945–1960 (2002)

  8. Florido, Adrian - How 'Little Tokyo' Of Los Angeles Changed Into 'Bronzeville' And Back Again (NPR)

  9. Kim, Sojin - Atomic Nancy: Sounds of Los Angeles (Smithsonian Folklife)

  10. Visual Communications Staff - Bronzeville, Little Tokyo – A Threshold in Time and Place (VC Media)

RESEARCH QUESTION​S

​

  1. How did the Japanese American internment affect other communities of color in Los Angeles?

  2. How did music play a role in the “re-culturalization” of Little Tokyo post-internment?

  3. How have Japanese Americans and Asian Americans in Los Angeles played a role in shaping popular music today?

  4. How did the Little Tokyo community act as a vital space for the Japanese American community and act as a temporary space for other communities during and after the internment especially in cultural contexts?

  5. What notable figures contributed to music culture in Little Tokyo during and post WWII?

  6. How were the jazz musicians of Bronzeville and the Mexican American attendees of the Atomic Cafe an essential part of Little Tokyo’s cultural scene and significance today?

KEY FINDINGS & USAGE 

​

  1. What I hope to find throughout my research and my project is the ways that the Japanese American internment affected not just one community in Southern California but many. In my studies of Los Angeles and the music within it through Professor Kun’s teaching so far, I have learned about the essential history and cultural elements that ethnic communities have contributed to the city to make it what it is today. Even throughout the targeting and imprisoning of Japanese Americans, their community in Little Tokyo and the artistic elements within it somehow persisted, with the help of residents who temporarily inhabited the area and the Japanese who returned to the area once they were freed. I think this can shed light on not only the unjust effects of racial stereotyping and imprisonment that are reflective of the current state of modern day America, but also the importance of music as a form of communication and as a marker of social and political movements that can help communities persist and thrive in times of peril.

  2. I believe these findings can be used to contribute to the conversation and increasing awareness of the internment that happened during the 1940s; although the occurrence of the incarceration is generally made aware to the public, the nuances and the way that this event affected a large mass of populations within the United States is not something that often crosses our minds. I want to bring awareness to this historical context and the social waves that occurred in Little Tokyo the USC community as many of us many have been inadvertently affected by the topics that I hope to discuss. Finally, in a more general sense, I want to be able to acknowledge the contributions, however subtle, that Japanese and Asian Americans have made to American popular music within their own communities in addition to their interactions with other ethnic musical enclaves as I believe this an idea often forgotten or ignored in the conversation of music today.

bottom of page