How one independent institution is fighting a community’s erasure.

Wander around downtown Portland now, and it’s hard to see how this stretch of blocks just west of the Willamette River was once a thriving Japantown. A few hints remain—a collection of riverfront cherry blossom trees, subtle historical markers, and a handful of buildings that have been able to evade demolition.

This relatively quiet neighborhood goes by Old Town Chinatown now, but from the late 1800s until 1942 it was Nihomashi , or Japantown. Thousands of Japanese immigrants stopped here en route to jobs on farms and railroads in the Pacific Northwest. The boarding houses they called home, the shops that sustained their daily needs, and the schools that educated their children are gone, but the Japanese American Museu

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