The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday approved a motion calling for the preservation of two buildings from the Japanese American Commercial Village on Terminal Island.
In a 12-0 vote, council members instructed the Department of City Planning to prepare an application and initiate the process that would designate the buildings as historic cultural monuments.
The buildings, located at 700-702 and 712-716 Tuna St. in San Pedro, are among the last “standing links” to a once-thriving fishing village, according to Councilman Tim McOsker’s office.
McOsker, who represents the Harbor Area, introduced the motion last week.
“Today’s motion will help preserve the two last remaining structures that were part of a vibrant community destroyed by hate and paranoia,” McOsker said. “It is an important story, an American story, that needs to be told for generations to come in honor for our families.”
Members of the Terminal Islander Association joined the City Council and shared their ties with village.
Paul Hiroshi Boyea said their goal was to significantly honor the legacy of Terminal Island and the Japanese American community from the early 1900s.
“Terminal Island is very close to my heart because my mother was born there in 1919,” Boyea said. “She always reminded me that Terminal Island was also known as East San Pedro in the fishing harbor.
“(It) was a beautiful, close knit community of approximately 3,000 Japanese American citizens and immigrants,” he added.
Boyea noted that his grandfather went to Sacramento several times to challenge anti-Japanese legislation introduced by California government leaders such as a law that aimed to prohibit Japanese immigrants from owning fishing licenses.
“The Japanese fishing community suffered a severe injustice on February 1942 with the forced removal … which led to the imprisonment and trauma in concentration camps,” Boyea said.
“These historic buildings represent an integral part of American history that should never be forgotten,” Boyea added.
The attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 changed the course of Terminal Island’s village, according to McOsker’s office. Even before President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, the federal government took all non-native Japanese fishermen and community leaders into custody, and all traffic to and from the island was suspended.
The Terminal Island community became one of the first in the nation to be forcibly removed and relocated to internment camps.
On Feb. 19, 1942, Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 authorized the forced relocation and internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens.
The Terminal Island village is believed to be the only such community that was destroyed almost entirely, though the two remaining buildings stand as a testament of this history.