My City

I was just doing some searches on the 'net about Japanese and Bakersfield. I discovered some really cool things.

The first Japanese to arrive were sixty laborers hired by the Kern County Land Company through a labor contractor in 1889, eventually they left the area and KCLC hired more Japanese directly. During this time, the only Japanese women in the area were reportedly to have been three prostitutes. By 1899 Sutematsu Murakami and Kohei Tanaka had settled down and opened their own business, a bambooware store.

In the year of 1896 oil was discovered and the demand for laborers had sky rocketed. The Santa Fe Railroad company employed enough laborers to justify the construction of a labor camp facility for them. Fortunately, due to the demand of laborers and the high cost of living, the workers were well paid for their time.

19th, 20th and 21st streets were considered to be Chinatown in 1911. Though many of the Chinese style buildings are gone, a handfull still exist in the area (The Far East Cafe). Three inns, four billiard parlors, two barber shops, two stores and a bathhouse were all owned and operated by Japanese laborers.

I got this information from here Five Views: A History of Japanese Americans in California. The site is down, but the link is from Google's cache.