• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

THE SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL REPRODUCTION OF JAPANTOWN/ NIHONMACHI IN SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH by Samah Safiullah A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Degree in Bachelor of Arts In The Department of City and Metropolitan Planning Approved: ______________________________ _____________________________ Keith Bartholomew Stacey Harwood Thesis Faculty Supervisor Chair, Department of XXXX _______________________________ _____________________________ Keith Bartholomew Sylvia D. Torti, PhD Honors Faculty Advisor Dean, Honors College “Place memory encapsulates the human ability to connect with both the built and natural environments that are entwined in the cultural landscape. It is the key to the power of historic places to help citizens define their public pasts: places trigger memories for insiders, who have shared a common past, and at the same time places often can represent shared pasts to outsiders who might be interested in knowing about them in the present.” -Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place; Urban Landscapes as Public History Abstract My honors thesis is a historical, theoretical, and methodological approach to understanding the social and physical formation of Japantown and Japantown Street in Salt Lake City. I am interested in the formation of a specific ethnic enclave and micro-neighborhood which once existed. My thesis will analyze and record archives of Salt Lake City’s Japantown, in addition to oral histories of individuals who lived in Japantown and have connections to the Topaz internment camps of Delta, Utah. This research project’s purpose is to understand the gaps of recorded history in Salt Lake City, and the ways in which racialized, discriminated, and minoritized ethnic communities’ histories are often erased and disappear due to dominant Euro- centric modes of knowledge production and power. I aim to fill these gaps through the stories of community members. These individual narratives will allow for a perspective of identity formation through the lens of gender, race, class, and ethnicity. The thesis will also look at the past decisions made to destroy and develop over Japantown, and the decisions/influences which led to the designation of a certain group of people to segregated and cheap industrial lands high influenced and impacted by urban externalities such as noise and pollution. For this project, I am directly working with graduate student Naba Faizi on her thesis also related to Japantown. I will be assisting her with recording oral histories/interviews, creating a short documentary, and building an archival website of photographs, documents, information, etc. regarding the history and current state of Japantown. My work will assist in supplementing her project which is rooted in the present and future of Japantown, as well as community engagement and activism contingent with the Japanese community and individuals of Salt Lake City. Introduction While it is unknown to the public knowledge of Salt Lake City residents, the area in which the towering Salt Palace Convention Center lies used to be what one might label an ethnic enclave, minority neighborhood, or immigrant hub for a thriving and bustling Japanese community. Recently, the public has heard chatter of conflict in this area, as The Ritchie Group, a large-scale real estate development company, has invested in a project called Block 67 which will be built directly on Japantown Street, or 100 South. This tucked away street contains the two remaining historic buildings of Japantown (The Japanese Church of Christ and The Japanese Buddhist Temple). Once the (incorrect) rendering of the project was announced, a public history fight, or at least question about a past fight, was revived and the question of what happened to Japantown in the beginning was brought up by several mainstream Salt Lake City publications such as the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News. These media outlets asked questions which the Japanese community have been fighting to remain in public consciousness: what will happen to Japantown Street, and how will its memory and history be preserved? (This rendering of the Block 67 development by the Ritchie Group incorrectly faces the mountains, intentionally or unintentionally creating a distortion of the space it formulates.) With this current discourse, my thesis aims to walk back in history and draw a timeline which counters the previous questions asked by the mainstream media, and rather asks: What allowed the City to disrupt and displace a safe haven, and which mindsets led to the gentrification and removal of a cultural landscape layered with memories of pain, trauma, and escape from direct persecution, racism, sexism, and exploitation? The Japanese-American people have a very distinct relationship with citizenship, belonging, and place-making in the United States, Utah, and Salt Lake City. This relationship deserves to be amplified through the voices of the insiders who have suffered and persevered through time. As a researcher, my goal for this project is to gather the existing materials, resources, and stories of Japanese Americans who have a significant, emotional, and historical connection to the pre-existing space. With a combination of history, theory, and social interaction, I aim to observe the harmful consequences of Urban Renewal in Salt Lake City and the ways in which it forces dispersal, dislocation, and root shock among an already marginalized and minority community. I aim to analyze the ways in which imperialist and colonialist mindsets influence the histories which are recorded. I do not wish to speak for a community, rather observe the voices which have been recorded and placed in the shelves of the Marriott and Downtown Library, and to contrast the information with the oral interviews and histories of those dedicated to the Japantown of their personal past. This project recognizes that both the country of the United States and the state of Utah have a long history of violent colonialism and imperialism which began the mindset and approval of the actions which led to the destruction of Japantown. A paper regarding a plot of land in Utah must recognize the Indigenous peoples whose land we all occupy and have complacency with. The timeline of this history observes and discusses a few distinct points of time: The first arrival of Japanese immigrants to Utah and their settlement, the establishment of Salt Lake City’s Japantown through settlement, the disruption of Japantown during World War II through the internment of Japanese people in Topaz internment, and the revival and destruction of Japantown post internment. The formation and existence of Japantown is due to many various historical phenomena over time. The primary literature regarding Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans in Utah are histories written or informed by unconventional forms of records, such as oral histories and archived documents. A primary theme noted in resource compilations by historians and the Japanese community is the actual experience of migration to the United States. This entrance into globalization represented two main topics: the emergence of a capitalist exchange of labor across borders, and a new, evolving perception of a culture from the American government and people, which often held highlighted tones of Orientalist understandings of a “Far East” culture. This is shown in various pieces of literature which focus Asian populations and individual narratives within Utah. History The first Japanese people to arrive to the United States were those of an elite class, breaking what the world then knew as “Japanese Isolation”. Drawing in a stark contrast with the later influx of working-class people (farmers, peasants, fishermen, etc.), the evolution of America’s attitude towards the Japanese population fluctuated depending on the political and social relationships both governments had established with each other, and who was considered to be “acceptable” and “respectable” to the American public and society. “The newest interpretation of the social and political integration of ethnic enclaves uses global-ization theory to redefine the local place not as a self-contained niche but rather as a node in a transnational circuit to which it contributes and that also influences its daily activities”. When the first official ambassadors from Japan arrived in the United States in 1860, Harper’s Weekly wrote a piece which reflected on their visit: “Our people will go to Japan and will endeavor to show the Japanese the best side of the American character. On the other hand, the Japanese—if good relations be established between the two countries—will send out some of their people to plant Japanese colonies in our territory. Of this interchange the benefit will be obvious and mutual. Civilized as we boast of being, we can learn much of the Japanese—if nothing more, we can learn the duty of obeying the laws.” As a popular public media publication, Harper’s Weekly reflects the Western attitudes of conditionality within accepting the emergence of a new cultural relationship with the United States. The words “civilized” and “obeying” create a standard of respectability politics. The Japanese people were beneficial to the American people because of their model minority status, in which they could at the very least produce a sense of obedience and civility. “Social constructions of group identity that are generated and transmitted by the media in its capacity

Load more

  29

Copy Link