Stockton Japantown - San Joaquin Japanese Entrepreneurs circa 1915
The peak of Stockton's Japantown was the 1930s when it occupied several square blocks alongside of Manilatown and Chinatown. After the war, Stockton's Japantown was reduced to a shell with a few business barely holding on in the old downtown area. Later in the 1960s, the majority of pre-war Japantown, Chinatown, and Manilatown buildings were torn down with the construction of the crosstown freeway. Today, there are few if any visible reminders of Stockton's once bustling Japantown.
Pictures of pre-war Stockton Japantown from 1915 are captured in the attached files. These pictures are from a 1915 book published by the Japanese Association that shows all the "successful" businessman in San Joaquin County. Many of them are concentrated in Stockton's Japantown, but there are also pictures of farmers with large ranches in Ripon, Holt, and the Delta islands.
The book is nearly 100 years old and is in remarkable condition considering how many hands it's been passed through and the internment years at Rohwer. I have never seen these pictures published elsewhere and so I don't believe there are any other suriviving copies of this book. And of course, nobody has ever published a book on Stockton Japantown and so its history is relatively unknown.
For now, I am only uploading the first 40 pages or so. If there is demand, I will work on the rest of the book...
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