Santa Cruz Film Festival 2008

Once spanning 64 blocks, San Francisco’s Japantown stood as a testament to the urban immigrant experience. The WWII internment of the Japanese caused a rapid degradation of the neighborhood. Rather than provide assistance after the War to returning internees, the city and its corporate interests decided rather to demolish and rebuild Japantown completely as a tourist mecca. Evicted en masse, many with nowhere to go and a weak grasp of English, the citizens of Japantown fought back and halted the community’s total annihilation. By 1973, the neighborhood was reduced its final 4 blocks. Moving forward to 2006, external corporate forces again threaten to further shrink Japantown. Crossroads at Nihonmachi draws comparisons between then and now, and calls for vigilant activism in the face of the destruction of all poor and ethnic urban communities. While the faces in Crossroads In Nihonmachi are mainly Asian American, the lessons for all community activists is made strikingly clear.