Our Stories

Building Asian American Futures, with Lessons from the Past

In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we are highlighting our 26-year partnership with Little Tokyo Service Center in Los Angeles. Since its founding in 1979, LTSC has been a stalwart anchor for residents of every background, providing social services, creating and safeguarding affordable housing, fueling small businesses and serving as a beacon of Japanese-American cultural heritage well beyond the city’s Little Tokyo neighborhood.

All color photos courtesy Little Tokyo Service Center.

The Little Tokyo neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles can trace its beginnings to the late 19th century, when Charles Hama, a Japanese seafarer, opened a restaurant  on East First Street that he named Kame—turtle—in 1885, launching one of the city’s first Japanese-American businesses. By the early 20th century, the surrounding blocks were already bustling with Japanese culture and commerce, and restaurants, shops and other establishments supplied goods to the estimated 30,000 Japanese-American residents who had gravitated to Los Angeles and made it home.

But in 1942, all of that changed. In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Executive Order 9066 called for the internment of all Japanese Americans living along the West Coast. The repercussions of that shameful period of American bigotry shapes the neighborhood to this day.

Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC) in Los Angeles, a longtime LISC partner that serves people of all backgrounds in the community, knows that history well and promotes Japanese cultural preservation throughout Southern California, in part because so many of Little Tokyo’s Japanese-American residents were uprooted and interned during WWII.

Generations of Asian Americans come together through Little Tokyo Service Center's community-building and senior support activities.
Generations of Asian Americans come together through Little Tokyo Service Center's community-building and senior support activities.

In a 2018 blog, David Greenberg, director of research and evauluation, reflected on the interconnection of Little Tokyo's history with that of other marginalized groups in the region. “As the neighborhood emptied out, African Americans and Latinos moved in, but they, too, were displaced in later social and political upheavals,” wrote Greenberg. “The story of Little Tokyo is one example of how America’s treatment of immigrants is linked with the histories of other communities that have been discriminated against. And of how knowing our history is a vital step toward reckoning with contemporary challenges and events that shape our communities.”

Recently, those contemporary challenges have included stepped-up discrimination against and criminalization of immigrants, a familiar experience for the community's residents and their forebears. In response, LTSC’s deputy director, Erich Nakano, initiated “know your rights” training for residents of its affordable housing developments and childcare programs. As Greenberg and his team reported in a recent LISC white paper on supporting immigrant communities, LTSC also worked with attorneys and other nonprofit housing providers to ensure that building managers are trained and aware of resident rights in the case of a visit from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Knowing our history is a vital step toward reckoning with contemporary challenges and events that shape our communities.

When LTSC first formed forty years ago, it was in large part to address the dearth of social services, decent affordable housing and employment opportunities for local residents—disinvestment that was stemming from the legacy of internment, and later racist urban policy and urban renewal efforts gone wrong. LISC began partnering with LTSC in 1993, and in the past 26 years has invested nearly $11 million in grants and loans and assisted with affordable housing and economic development, and capacity building for the group. 

This year, LISC Los Angeles is supporting the organization to create the Little Tokyo Impact Fund, which will help LTSC acquire and manage commercial real estate as a means to preserving the legacy of Japanese and Japanese-American businesses, cultural institutions and spiritual centers of Little Tokyo. Recently, LTSC was able to buy the historic Umeya Rice Cake factory, owned by the Hamano family for 99 years, which will be repurposed as a mixed-use, transit-oriented affordable housing complex with upwards of 150 units.

 A historic view inside the Umeya Rice Cake Company and the Hamano family, who ran it for 99 years. LTSC will convert the defunct factory into the first affordable housing the neighborhood has seen in 20 years. (Photo courtesy Rex Hamano/Umeya Rice Cake Company)
A historic view inside the Umeya Rice Cake Company and the Hamano family, who ran it for 99 years. LTSC will convert the defunct factory into the first affordable housing the neighborhood has seen in 20 years. (Photo courtesy Rex Hamano/Umeya Rice Cake Company)

According to LTSC’s director of community economic development, Takao Suzuki, “once completed, this project will be the first 100 percent affordable housing development in Little Tokyo in 20 years.” For both the Hamano family and LTSC, the restoration of the building is deeply significant. “The whole land [around the factory building] at the time was helping immigrants with jobs and giving opportunity. So it will continue to be that way given LTSC’s mission.”

Imparting Japanese American history and culture underpins all of LTSC's work in the areas of social service, affordable housing and economic development and small business support.
Imparting Japanese American history and culture underpins all of LTSC's work in the areas of social service, affordable housing and economic development and small business support.

LTSC also has a long track record of sparking small business growth in the neighborhood, where the local economy is still struggling to return to its historic levels of dynamism and prosperity. One of these programs, called @LASmallBizubator, provides coaching and technical assistance for emerging entrepreneurs who wouldn’t otherwise have access to mentorship or support. Businesses helped through @LASmallBizcubator include a streetwear company, a pottery shop and a small publishing house

Mariko Lochridge, a recent transplant from Japan who serves as a coach with the program, exemplifies the melding of cultures, the bubbling entrepreneurship and the urge to innovate that has been part of Little Tokyo’s DNA since its earliest days.

“I love seeing two people with supposedly ‘nothing in common’ connecting and learning from one another,” saif Lochridge of the entrepreneurs she mentors. “I believe that innovation is always born of the most unlikely of partnerships.” Indeed, partnerships have formed the heart of LTSC's innovations on behalf of community wellbeing all along.

LISC has invested $11 million in grants and loans to support Little Tokyo Service Center