Japanese Hospital: 101 S. Fickett Street
by Kristen Hayashi, Ph.D.
The former Japanese Hospital building, located at 1st and Fickett Streets in Boyle Heights, reflects the local Japanese American community’s determination to ensure that immigrant and American-born Japanese had access to adequate health care. While the hospital is a tangible reminder of the discriminatory legislation that Japanese immigrants were forced to navigate in the early twentieth century, it equally symbolizes a significant civil rights victory in Los Angeles’s history.
Discrimination and the Need for the Japanese Hospital
Beginning in the 1880s, recruiters actively encouraged Japanese laborers to immigrate to the United States to meet the growing demand for an industrial and agricultural workforce. Like the Chinese workers who preceded them, Japanese laborers were viewed as a temporary workforce and exempted from citizenship and naturalization due to their race. Unsatisfied, nativists who intended to “Keep California White,” continued to lobby elected officials in California and other western states to pass further restrictions on Japanese immigration. In 1907, Japan and the US signed the “Gentleman’s Agreement,” which halted further immigration of laborers from Japan to the US.
In addition to the limitations on immigration, subsequent legislation was passed in California that aimed to constrain the economic mobility of Japanese immigrants who had already settled in the United States. In 1913, the California legislature passed the first iteration of the Alien Land Law, which prohibited “aliens ineligible for citizenship” (Chinese and Japanese immigrants) from owning and, in some cases, leasing land. To circumvent this restriction, many Issei (first generation immigrants from Japan) purchased property in their Nisei (second generation, American-born) children’s names. But, recognizing this loophole in the legislation, an additional amendment was added in 1923 that limited the rights of Nisei children from holding land in trust for an alien parent. The restrictions became even more stringent with subsequent iterations of the Alien Land Law in the 1920s. This exclusionary policy was intentionally designed to undermine the predominance of Asian immigrants in the agricultural industry as well as their abilities to compete as proprietors of small businesses.
These exclusionary policies seeped into other aspects of daily life as well, including health care. Public health officials associated disease with recent immigrants and certain ethnic groups, using race to determine how to administer public health programs.1 Viewed as the least assimilable amongst immigrant groups, Japanese immigrants were excluded from Americanization programs and other public health programs offered to recent immigrants in Los Angeles. Owed to housing discrimination and restrictive racial covenants, the Japanese population in Los Angeles was largely confined to the Little Tokyo district downtown and to nearby Boyle Heights and in turn, xenophobic and racist rhetoric provided the justification to deny residents of those neighborhoods access to mainstream health care. Ultimately, key civic leaders viewed immigrant communities as a hindrance to Los Angeles becoming a “modern city.”
In 1913, several Japanese medical professionals established a facility known as Turner Street Hospital in Little Tokyo, which later came to be known as the Southern California Japanese Hospital. Midwife Mary Akita, the first Japanese American nurse in Los Angeles, was integral to the operations of the hospital. Akita recognized the urgent need for a maternity ward as picture brides arrived in the city and Japanese immigrant families continued to grow. Itinerant Japanese midwives assisted with childbirth and traveling physicians provided treatment of serious illness for Japanese immigrants and their children since they were often denied access to most area hospitals. Although the hospital was an important resource, the growth of the Japanese American community, along with the devastating impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic signified the need for more substantive medical care.
Navigating Obstacles to Establish the Hospital
In 1926, five immigrant Japanese doctors decided that a larger hospital with state-of-the art surgical facilities would help to address the critical need for care in the community. On behalf of his colleagues, Dr. Kikuwo Tashiro filed an application to incorporate the Japanese Hospital of Los Angeles. California Secretary of State Frank C. Jordan denied the physician’s request on the grounds that the application conflicted with a 1911 treaty between the United States and Japan, which intended to outline permissible activities for Japanese nationals in the United States, as well as the Alien Land Law of California, which had been made even more stringent.2
Despite not having the rights and protections of US citizens, the immigrant doctors utilized the legal system to challenge the California Secretary of State’s decision as well as the dejure discrimination that intended to hinder their social mobility. In 1927, just five years after he immigrated to the United States, Dr. Tashiro became the plaintiff in the California State Supreme Court case, which challenged the laws that prevented the establishment of the Japanese Hospital. A year later, his case went before the US Supreme Court. While the California Secretary of State argued that the 1911 treaty did not permit the doctors to incorporate and lease land, the legal counsel representing the doctors provided a counterargument suggesting that since the language in the treaty was so vague, it gave Japanese nationals leeway to conduct any activities that furthered trade. The doctors prevailed after the US Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling.3
The community rallied behind the cause, raising over $100,000 on the eve of the Great Depression to construct the hospital. Issei architect Yoshisaku Hirose designed the two-story hospital building in the Streamline Moderne style, which gave it a modern, state-of-the-art look.4 The majority of Hirose’s architectural work was rooted in Boyle Heights and Little Tokyo, in close proximity to where he lived and socialized. Hirose designed (the current) Koyasan Buddhist Temple on 1st Street in Little Tokyo. In 1937, he designed several of the buildings that comprise Tenrikyo Junior Church of America at 2727 East First Street, located less than two blocks from the Japanese Hospital and his residence on Gleason Avenue in Boyle Heights.
The Japanese Hospital opened on December 1, 1929, signaling hope for the community. The modest exterior of the building, highly sensitive to the economic climate of the time, also suggested that a significant portion of the money designated for the construction of the hospital was spent on the interior spaces. Despite the dismal economic conditions, the hospital remained open throughout the Great Depression.
References
1 Natalia Molina, Fit to Be Citizens: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006): 11. Molina argues that race shaped the city’s public health policies and determined the accessibility of health services to various communities. She describes a racial hierarchy that public health officials used to determine whether public health services would be extended to the city’s Mexican, Chinese, and Japanese populations.
2 “Treaty of Commerce and Navigation Between the United States and Japan,” The American Journal of International Law, 5, 2, Supplement: Official Documents (April 1911): 100.
3 Tashiro v. Jordan, 256 P. 545, Supreme Court of California, 1927. Westlaw Next 201 Cal 236. Jordan v. K. Tashiro, 49 S.Ct.47, Supreme Court of the United States, 1928. Westlaw Next 278 U.S. 123.
4 In 1903, Yoshisaku “Yos” Hirose left Nagasaki, Japan, his birthplace and home of twenty-one years to immigrate to the United States. From 1911 to 1915, Hirose attended the Armor Institute of Technology in Illinois. Soon after earning a bachelor’s degree in architecture, he migrated to Los Angeles where he began working as an architect, draftsman, and engineer. He established his office in the Pico-Union neighborhood and resided across town in Boyle Heights. In addition to the buildings in Boyle Heights and Little Tokyo that Hirose designed before the war, he also designed the school at the Poston concentration camp where he was incarcerated during World War II.