In San Jose, a center of California’s housing crisis, one of the oldest and last remaining Japanese-owned farms in the state will be demolished to pave the way for urban housing.
San Jose is home to one of only three existing Japantowns in the country and the only one built on agricultural roots. But preservationists and community leaders are fighting to save one century-old farmhouse on the site that they say represents the towering contributions Japanese Americans made to the state’s agricultural history. For much of the 20th century, the city and its surrounding areas were mostly farmland where Japanese American families harvested fruits and vegetables.
In July, the San Jose City Council voted to turn the Sakauye family’s 23-acre fruit orchard into a mixed-used development constituting nearly 1,500 apartment units and town houses. Demolition of farming structures, including barns and sheds dating to the early 20th century, is expected to begin in February.
Vanessa Hatakeyama, the acting director of the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, said the Sakauye farm is a remnant of San Jose’s agricultural landscape — one that was built by Japanese immigrants — before it was transformed by the tech and suburban housing booms.
“As we continue to develop what’s now Silicon Valley, it’s easy to forget that what brought all these amazing immigrant groups to this area was the call for agricultural labor,” Hatakeyama said. “The Sakauye farm is a symbol of the prosperity that a lot more Japanese Americans would have had if they’d been able to keep their land during World War II.”
Preservation activists and city officials are discussing how to save the farmhouse, which the farm’s late owner, Eichii “Ed” Sakauye, lived in his entire life — a structure, built in 1920, that embodies Japanese American farming history and the discrimination the group endured at the hands of the U.S. government.
Eichii Sakauye’s father, Yuwakichi, purchased land in 1907, six years before California passed a law barring noncitizens, particularly Japanese farmers, from owning farmland.
Before World War II, Japanese farmers like Sakauye made enormous contributions to California’s agricultural economy, producing more than 40% of commercial vegetables and 70% of greenhouse flowers in the state. The government confiscated thousands of farms, homes and businesses during incarceration, costing Japanese Americans $4 billion in today’s value, according to the federal Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. By 1960, the number of Japanese American farms had fallen to just a quarter of their prewar total.
Eichii Sakauye, who was incarcerated at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, was more fortunate than most. His neighbor Edward Seely cared for the family farm during incarceration and returned it to him after the war. Though Sakauye died in 2005, the farm remains active: Another Japanese farming family, the Tsukudas, have been leasing and operating a fruit stand on the land for the past 40 years.
“It’s important for my kids, my grandkids, to know the story of what happened to Japanese Americans during internment,” said Rosemary Kamei, the vice mayor of San Jose. Kamei’s ex-husband, like Sakauye, was incarcerated at Heart Mountain.
After months of discussion with preservationists, the City Council agreed last month to save and move the farmhouse to History Park, an outdoor museum of restored historic landmarks, at an estimated cost of $500,000. The developer has committed $100,000 to restoration efforts, and Kamei said the city is looking for grants and other resources to raise the rest of the fees.
While Kamei and other community organizers have expressed support for moving the farmhouse to History Park, they said their priority is still to keep the historic farmstead on-site and to integrate it, along with some orchard trees, into the housing project as part of a 2.5-acre commemorative park.
“This idea that we can wipe the slate clean and start over is something that frustrates us, because we don’t think that’s good,” said Ben Leech, president of the Preservation Action Council of San Jose, one of the nonprofit groups leading efforts to save the farmhouse. “Cities are more cohesive places when layers of history can co-exist.”
Sakauye’s children, Carolyn Sakauye and Jane May, have said through their lawyer that they didn’t consider the family farm worth saving, but they later backed efforts to relocate their father’s farmhouse to History Park. They didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Kamei and Leech said that preservationists and city officials are working on a cost assessment of both options and that they plan to reach a decision by the end of the month. Yet, the city has struggled to balance preservation efforts with addressing urgent housing needs in San Jose, the most expensive large city in the country in which to rent or buy a home.
A draft environmental impact report on the Sakauye farm redevelopment project found that preserving the historic buildings in a historic district would eliminate more than 400 units of housing and about a third of the affordable housing units. And moving the farmhouse into the public park could become a maintenance issue for the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services.