Welcome to Lost Kinjo, a year-long project to uncover a little-known chapter of Japanese American community.
California once thrived with more than 40 different Japanese American neighborhoods or kinjo prior to WWII. They have all disappeared.
Over the next year, we will tell the stories of these Lost Kinjo or neighborhoods and discover why Japanese Americans left and where they went.
AsAmNews gained its inspiration from Preserving California Japantowns, a project by Donna Graves and Jill Shiraki. The two worked tirelessly to identify the neighborhoods and to preserve its history.
This project is funded by the California State Library Japanese American Civil Liberties Program and the Takahashi Family Foundation.
