Spaces of Belonging
February of 2025 - February of 2027
Project coordinators: Steve Nava and Tom Izu
This project amplifies the voices of people who have contributed to a sense of belonging for others in their communities. Project coordinators Steve Nava and Tom Izu guide students as they conduct oral histories that bridge generational as well as ethnic differences. The oral history topics vary but include interviews with social and cultural workers in the Silicon Valley region who have contributed to building belonging and transforming the lives their community members. This project is an intervention into the way we think about history, moving away from a static perception towards history as a process of intergenerational exchange, social justice, and cultural awareness.
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Japantown
Spaces of Belonging in Japantown, San Jose
Oral History Interview - Adriana Garcia
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Oral History Interview - Rory Fukuda
February 9, 2024
In this oral history interview Rory Fukuda, a retired designer draftsman who grew up near Japantown where his father ran a barbershop in the 1970s shares his connections to the family legacy businesses in San Jose’s Japantown. Fukuda reflects upon the changing landscape of the San Jose area near Japantown from orchards to the diverse metropolis we see today with its tech-heavy industries. He notes an important paradox concerning the desire to preserve the Japanese culture in Japantown. Fukuda explains that most people who are part of the Japantown community actually live outside of Japantown, but they are committed to building sense of community there. He adds that the younger shop owners and connected community members try to bring more foot traffic to Japantown for the several cultural festivals that include Chinese and now Vietnamese cultural events in addition to the Japanese festivals.
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Oral History Interview - Lynne Santo Yamaichi
February 23, 2024
Lynne Santo Yamaichi shares her experience growing up in a tight knit Japanese American Betsuin Buddhist church centered community. She is part of a second generation whose parents immigrated to the United States to experienced order 9066 internment or concentration camps during WWII in the 1940s. She reflects on the effect the camps had on her generation and her parents’ generation as well as her current life as director of a childcare facility in San Jose’s Japantown. This oral history is a description of the ideal aspects of generational transmission of culture in a space of belonging that is currently challenged by the forces of change through gentrification although Santo Yamaichi does not directly address gentrification. It is my hopes that the reader reflect on the importance of generational connection and community support as well as the resources ethnic communities lose when neighborhoods are gentrified and local ethnic groups are displaced. Many second generation members leave their ethnic communities in search of more lucrative life opportunities as their local economies are squeezed by inflated property costs. This is the social context in which this oral history series takes place.
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Oral History Interview - Tamiko Rast
February 27, 2024
Tamiko Rast is president of the San Jose Japantown Business Association and owner of the State of Grace tattoo shop in Japantown where she lives. She is Roy Murotsune's (1925- 2021) granddaughter. Mr. Murotsune is locally known for running Roy’s Gas Station in SJ Japantown until 1990 when he had to close due to the high cost of updating their gas storage system. In this oral history interview Tamika Rast of the well-known Rast family who currently own and operate Roy’s Station a popular coffee shop in 5th and Jackson Street in San Jose reflects on growing up in Japantown under her grandmother’s care while her parents’ were working. She talks about experiencing negotiating being hapa or “mixed race” (Swedish- and Japanese-American) and growing up part of a multi-racial brood of adopted and biological siblings in a place where Japanese ethnic pride was strong in the aftermath of order 9066 or Japanese concentration camps during WWII. She reflects on her love for Japantown as the president of the Japantown business association and the town-like experience living and working in the neighborhood where she played as a child. She shares a positive outlook on this space where her family continues to nurture the local community through volunteer services, community gatherings, and lively businesses entrepreneurship.
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Oral History Interview - Steve Fugita
February 29, 2024
In this oral history interview retired psychology professor, Dr. Steve Fugita who has worked at the Japanese American Museum since the 1990s, shares his experiences growing up as a Japanese American navigating changing national reception of Japanese Americans. Dr. Fugita analyzes how ethnicity changes in meaning over time. He emphasizes the effects of war, discrimination, stereotypes, and segregation on his and his communities’ sense of belonging to local community spaces of recreation, work, and civic engagement. He addresses home ownership and career opportunities in terms of a growing career field for Asian Americans and a shrinking homeownership structure of opportunity. Another notable point Dr. Fugita makes is how one feels Japaneseness shifts and changes as these social structures change, reflecting on a conversation with a white military colleague he spoke with during his time as a military researcher at the Army Research Institute in Arlington Virginia, who noted that the stereotype of the “silent thoughtful Asian” was an advantage for Generals in the military since a white General who might have the same personality traits would be seen as weak and not assertive enough. Dr. Fugita points to the ambivalence of racial stereotypes and the historically fluid dynamics of reception as related to social opportunities and access within personal interactions.
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Oral History Interview - Jen Masuda
March 12, 2024
Jen Masuda shares how she started working as the Executive Director of Yu-Ai Kai Japanese American Senior Care Center and Japantown itself after discovering the center when her grandmother became ill with Alzheimer’s dementia. She explores the role of community as she moved from place to place and through serious health struggles. As a person of being of “mixed race” Japanese and white, and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, she grappled with identity and belonging as her family moved from place to place. As an adult she survived cancer while caring for her grandmother as she navigated rebuilding a career and a new longterm relationship. Masuda shares how important the Japantown community as a space of belonging and support continues to shape her life today.
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Oral History Interview - Tom Izu
August 13, 2024
In this oral history interview Tom Izu, civil liberties activist leader shares intimate moments of his life growing up within the context of racial contradictions he faced in a society where a clear understanding of the Japanese American experience was scarce. He reflects on the meaning of generational and economic change and the future of San Jose’s Japantown during time of rapid change. Mr. Izu is the former Executive Director of the California History Center and served for three years as the director of the Yu-Ai Kai senior center of San Jose, Japantown. He is active in the work of the Japanese American Museum of San Jose and an integral part of the leadership of the Nikkei Resisters multi-generational civil liberties grassroots organization which he co-founded with his partner, celebrated local and national activist leader Susan Hayase.
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Oral History Interview - Brendan Boon
February 26, 2025
In this hour-long interview Brendan Boon, the great-grandchild of south-Japanese immigrants who entered California in the late 1890s during the Good Rush, shares about his life growing up in Cupertino and his connection to San Jose Japantown as a place of belonging to community. He notes that his great grandparents ended up working in agriculture like many Asian American immigrants in the late-1800s and that the struggles of Asian Americans, starting with the Chinese immigrants who built Chinatown where San Jose Japantown sits today, presaged the sense of community preservation felt by many who live an/or work in San Jose Japantown. Brendan, his partner and friends, opened Minasan, an eclectic shop/hangout in 2025, while Brendan still works a fulltime job at Google. His intention is to create a no-pressure sales hangout, a shop where folks waiting for a table at the local sushi restaurant or an elder can stop by and brows and chat after picking up their prorated lunch at the Yu-Ai Kai senior center.
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Artists & Artivists
Spaces of Belonging in Activist and Creative Communities
Oral History Interview - Juan Carlos Araujo
March 12, 2024
In this interview Juan Carlos Araujo reflects on growing up in the barrios of San Jose and finding his community through committing to the local culture he loved in his youth, wall at and skateboarding. He describes the struggle to maintain a community-based art studio, Empire Seven, with autonomy in the context of bureaucracy and the forces of capital as they shape who has access to public spaces, like his community art space. The struggle for a creative space of belonging in the face of economic disadvantage, high rent and lack of capital is the focus of tis oral history interview.
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Oral History Interview - Carolyn Kameya
March 25, 2025
Carolyn Kameya is a local activist and master gardener who dedicates her time to preserving the Emma Prusch Park orchard and the Guadalupe Community Garden and serving as a member of the council for the Urban Growers Network. Kameya also joined and remains active in the grassroots San Jose Nikkei Resisters community movement in San Jose Japantown she joined early in Donald Trump’s first administration when she became concerned about the Muslim Ban and Immigrant family separation policies. In this interview Kameya reflects on the meaning and purpose of this work as well as the struggle to support Japantown's efforts to stay vibrant in the face of gentrification. Kameya reflects on her lineage and places their experiences within an historical context of socio-economic change outlining a vision of community change through work and activism. She focuses on cultural tensions within social justice efforts and the challenges they face. As she reflects on her life growing up in Decatur, Illinois where her bi-racial identity was not understood and how this shaped her sense of belonging. She emphasizes the need for social and cultural understanding as a solution to the problem of social exclusion.
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Oral History Interview - Shirley Kuramoto
September 8, 2025
In this oral history Shirley Kuramoto (age 92 when this interview took place) shares captivating stories about growing up during the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WW II under order 9066 when she was age twelve. The intimate details include her feelings of being bullied as a child as a result of the Anti-Japanese American fervor during the war and how her stoic response is a through line in her life that she had to confront in her middle age years. She also shares what it was like attending pro-Japan nationalist school while also simultaneously attending pro-American school in the years of her families incarceration. Kuramoto shares the wisdom she garnered throughout her life and how her philosophy of life transformed and adapted to new social and political moments. She is currently a playwright for the local Red Ladder Theater group which infuses Japanese cultural perspectives and humor to entertain elders at the Yu-Ai Kai senior center and more. Her deep yearning to learn the arts and Asian American and other ethnic histories is deeply inspiring as is her storytelling.
This project has been funded through a National Endowment of the Humanities grant, "Voices of Silicon Valley", to California History Center at De Anza College. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this {article, book, exhibition, film, program, database, report, Web resource}, do not necessarily represent those of the NEH.
