Photo 1 – Betty and Fujiye Fujimoto dressed for Obon parade. Isleton, circa 1935. Courtesy of Betty Kashiwagi.
Photo 2 - The town of Isleton prepares for the annual Asparagus Festival. Isleton, 1928. Courtesy of Anne Hoshiko Akabori.

History Forgotten, Isleton’s Japantown
By Jill Shiraki, Nichi Bei Weekly, New Year’s Edition, January 1, 2010

Unfamiliar with the Sacramento Delta region but lured by Japantown lore and a faintrecollection of actor-comedian Pat Morita claiming his roots in Isleton, my family and I
visited the riverfront town. Driving the two blocks of Main Street, we easily found
Chinatown with its distinctive architecture and remnants of Chinese characters on
signage and in building windows, but saw nothing telling of any former JapaneseAmerican presence. Perplexed, we stopped to admire the dedication to Isleton’s Chinese
American community and seated ourselves next to the Chinese pagoda to enjoy our bentolunch.

Similar to other Delta towns, Isleton grew with the rich peat soil from the river, ideal foragriculture and prides itself as the “Asparagus Capital of the World”. In 1919, Thomas
Foon Chew founded Bayside Cannery at Isleton and brought his processing experience tothe Delta, becoming the first to package green asparagus. In the early 1900s, theJapanese laborers followed the path to the Delta. Through hardwork and dexterity, theJapanese comprised 31.7% of the agricultural labor force in the region by 1910, nearing
the 41.5% whites and exceeding the 24.9% Chinese. At its peak, Isleton had fivecanneries, including industry leaders, H.J. Heinz Company and Libby, McNeil, andLibby.

To conduct research for Preserving California’s Japantowns, I returned several years
later with a Sanborn insurance map and Japanese American News 1941 Directory anddiscovered that the Chinese pagoda and park was in fact located in the Japanese sectionof Isleton. By 1941, the Japantown had 12 boarding houses, 5 stores, 2 pool halls, 3 fish
markets, 2 restaurants, a tofu store, barber, bathhouse, and liquor store. There was a
Buddhist Church, a Japanese school, a Christian church, and 10 other Japaneseorganizations. While we now had a vague idea of building use from the map, we still
could not match the Japanese shopkeepers listed with P.O. Box addresses to the historicbuildings. On another research trip, my colleague Donna Graves discovered the former
Buddhist Church at 409 F Street, now the All Nations Church of God.

For our recent visit, we were eager to share the Delta ghost towns with Tom Ikeda andDana Hoshide of Densho, who are collaborating with us on oral history interviews. We
were excited to finally identify the in tact storefronts and Japanese family businesses witha hand-drawn map by former resident Irene (Toyota) Hoshiko, a connection made by
Janet Sakata of the Walnut Grove History Project. We noted the former Fujimoto
Boarding House and Boot Store at 54 Main Street, with its glass windows tastefully filledwith jewelry and gift items to promote Aunt Shirley’s & Ashley’s Arts, Etc. Charlene
Anderson of the Isleton Brannan-Andrus Historical Society met with us and confirmed
the little-known history of Japantown, by her familiarity with only three familybusinesses documented of the 30 plus listings in the directory. In efforts to revitalize thetown, other former Japantown storefronts now feature antiques, art galleries, framing
services, and gift stores. Gone are any markings of the boarding houses, barber,bathhouse, tofu, and fish market of the self-contained pre-World War II Japantown, yet
the buildings remain as hollow reminders of its past.

In the Chinese section, Anderson shared with us the plans to restore as a museum, theBing Kong Tong Association building, featured on the PBS “History Detective” in 2008,
that now dons a bright hand-painted mural by local students. A few doors down, wepeered into the former Chinese bait shop, dry goods store, and provider of local townnews, to see the renovation in progress for the future home of the historical society.
Located amidst these two sites, we stopped in to meet Jean Yokotobi, a current proprietor

of the deli at 24 Main Street, who attends the Walnut Grove Buddhist Church and may beable to help the lost history of Isleton’s Japantown find new footing.

Behind the current location of the Chinese pagoda and park, formerly stood the JapaneseHall, adjacent to the sumo mound, basketball court, and baseball diamond. While thevibrant Japantown of the 1930s, filled with community picnics, relays, and parades,
remains invisible, the stories shared by Betty Fujimoto Kashiwagi, in an oral history
interview, begins to recreate its aura. As the sixth child in a family of 5 boys and 3 girls,Betty, born in 1929, had little responsibility. While her father Tokuhei Fujimoto worked
in the fields farming, and her mother Tama was busy managing the boarding house andboot store, she spent her idle time roaming Japantown. She reflects back, “My friend hadto help at the family restaurant, but my only job was to empty the trash cans in theboarding house. I visited the different shops . . . I guess I was a curious child.“As though time stood still, Betty’s eyes lit up as she vividly recounts her visits to theShusho Tofu-ya and described “the blocks of tofu floating like riverboats”. One day,while she was sitting on the counter watching Mr. Washiyu repair shoes, a Caucasiancustomer entered the store, and after picking up her order and paying her bill, thecustomer handed Betty five cents. “She must have thought I was a poor waif, but I wasexcited and ran across the street to buy myself a piece of candy.” In the close-knit
Japantown, her mother never worried as everyone kept a watchful eye over the children.

Fearing the Chinese gambling houses, Betty remembers walking in the middle of thestreet on her way to the Isleton Union Oriental School, where she joined her Chinese andJapanese classmates. As a young girl, she knew the newer brick school across the way
was for the whites, but was unaware of the reason for the segregation. Naively, she wasexcited to leave Isleton for the first time due to the forced evacuation and did notunderstand the gravity until she faced the crude conditions at the Assembly Center.

Throughout the war years, her spirit was not broken as her mother’s strength andresiliency encouraged her to make the best of the situation. Upon her return to Isleton
when her parents worked at Bayside Cannery, Betty faced blatant racism from fellow

students and administrators, and boldly spoke out against the unjust treatment. “Aftercamp makes me cry,” she laments, “I had the best mother. I told her everything. She
understood and was accepting. She treated everyone the same.” Several of the former
shopkeepers also worked in the cannery, but no one returned to Main Street. By 1946,
several storefronts were occupied by Filipino businesses, including a nursery, market andsoda fountain, grocery and dry goods, barbers, and gas station.

After spending her junior year as a school girl in San Francisco, and her senior year at
Rio Vista High School, the Fujimoto family left Isleton to farm strawberries for
Driscoll’s in Pajaro Valley. Later, she married Sam Kashiwagi and raised her fourchildren in Sacramento. Yet, her heart remains in Isleton. Betty Kashiwagi helped toorganize the annual Isleton Japantown reunions for 25 years, from 1979 to 2004.
Unsettled by the forgotten history, she worries that no one will know the Japanese story
and not many are left who are willing to share it. She still beams as she reminisces, “Forme, life in Isleton was good.”
Preserving California’s Japantowns in collaboration with Densho: The Japanese American Legacy
Project is conducting “place-based interviews” to gather first hand knowledge and experience of pre-WorldWar II Japantown community life in the Delta and Central Valley. With the support of Janet Sakata, Geneand Jane Itogawa, Louie Watanabe, and Barbara Takei, interviews of 6 individuals from Walnut Grove andIsleton were conducted in December 2009. Plans are underway to identify potential interviewees ofFresno’s historic Japantown (known locally as Fresno’s Chinatown). To assist, contact Jill Shiraki at (510)277-2164 or jshiraki@sbcglobal.net