The years were approximately 1943 through 1946

The space was an empty Little Tokyo

This is where it all began!!!  Executive Order 9066

In February 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 forcing over 120,000 Japanese into “Relocation Camps” as pictured below.

"Manzanar was one of ten remote war relocation centers to which Japanese Americans were sent. Enclosed by barbed wire, the square-mile camp area contained barracks, mess halls, and other buildings, and was home to more than 11,000 internees between March 1942 and November 1945.Today, the Manzanar National Historic Site, as a unit of the National Park Service, preserves and interprets the many stories of Manzanar’s past.” source>

The Los Angeles Japanese-American community, “Little Tokyo”, like others on the West Coast became a “ghost town.” Simultaneously, the “Great Migration” from the South occurred as African Americans came west in search of defense plant work.  Due to racial covenants it was extremely difficult to find housing.  Many settled in the vacated Little Tokyo thus dubbing the name Bronzeville.

Bronzeville was located at the north end of Central Avenue, the heart of black L.A. Many businesses and enterprises jockey for the Downtown space. “Bars like the Cherryland Cocktail Lounge, nightspots like the Cobra Room and after-hours joints like the Finale Club featured some of the best jazz in Southern California. The well-appointed Shepp’s Playhouse had small bands in the first floor bar and elaborate stage shows produced by Leonard Reed and Foster Johnson upstairs. In 1944, trumpeter/composer Gerald Wilson started his band to provide music for a Shepp’s revue. At First and San Pedro streets was the Civic Hotel (it had been the Miyako Hotel), which housed musicians like Charlie Parker, Teddy Edwards and Billy Strayhorn, as well as Scatman Crothers and other entertainers. The late saxophonist Jack McVea recounted taking Parker back to the Civic after a late night recording date at the end of 1945. With no explanation, Parker silently hurled his alto saxophone into the lobby wall, smashing it to pieces. A half block west, tap dancer Foster Johnson presided over the Finale Club. Shows started at midnight, with liquor illicitly provided by a character on the fringe of the club. Exotic dancer Princess Starletta, comics, dancers and the Howard McGhee band worked all night long, drawing Hollywood people like Judy Garland as well as the Central Avenue crowd. Young trumpeter Clora Bryant, impressed by Central Avenue glamour, didn’t like the Bronzeville grit of the Finale. “I wasn’t used to a rough place like that,” she said a couple of years ago. source>

The Japanese were released from the internment camps and headed back to their homes in Los Angeles.  Meanwhile Bronzeville was overcrowded.  There were many more African Americans; in the United States than Japanese and many African Americans made their way west from oppressive Southern states and settled in Little Tokyo Bronzeville.  

 “The first hurdle Japanese Americans faced on resurrecting Little Tokyo was not in the fact of the newly resident African American population.  Rather discriminatory structural barriers to entrepreneurship and ownership that had either stunted Japanese American ambitions prior to Pearl Harbor or had been elaborated during the war years interfered with efforts to reestablish the prewar commercial enclave.  Japanese Americans returning to LA found it impossible to secure business licenses or purchase insurance and were dogged with unreasonable property tax demands.  For example, Los Angeles County said Koyasan Buddhist Temple on east First Street owed $5000 in unpaid property tax….In the county’s twisted logic; the Temple lost its right to church exemption because it had not fulfilled its religious duties. The congregation was interned elsewhere and now as hostel for returning Japanese, it was performing for profit.  The temple had to work out a payment plan to keep the 1940 built building from being sold from under them" source>

The Second Eviction….The End

December 30, 1952 was the beginning of construction of the Parker Center and the destruction of Little Tokyo Bronzeville.  The Parker Center now occupies where most of Bronzeville existed. “In the end Bronzeville ceased to exist less from disputes between African Americans and Japanese Americans than as a result of racist spatial practices by a local state that continued to view property associated with either community as less valuable and thus easier to manipulate than Anglo occupied real estate.” source>

1. Where is Bronzeville 2014?
2. Bronzeville? Is there a deeper meaning to this name
3. Critical Maps Little Tokyo
4. Little Tokyo: History in the Making