The fight to save the last parts of the historic Japanese fishing village on Terminal Island

Months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese-American fishing community on San Pedro's Terminal Island was given 48 hours to pack their belongings before being forced into internment camps to the west. After the evacuation, most of their village was razed to the ground.

But two buildings have remained standing for more than 80 years. Now the original residents, their families and supporters have joined forces to protect the last remnants of their history on Tuna Street.

Tim Yamamoto's grandfather leased one of the buildings – a grocery store that served the fishermen and cannery workers responsible for stocking operations such as StarKist Tuna and Van Camp Seafood. The second building next door was a dry goods store. Both are owned by the Port of Los Angeles.

When Yamamoto, 66, learned that the adjacent buildings might be demolished, he felt compelled to take action to honor his late parents, who grew up on Terminal Island and married in one of the internment camps.

“These buildings show that something was here. If they are destroyed, every trace of Terminal Island's history will be gone,” he said. “I just want to do something to keep some kind of history alive.”

Members of the Terminal Islanders Club – a group of nearly 200 that includes Yamamoto – learned of possible plans for the buildings when a San Pedro resident observed workers inspecting the area. Yamamoto and others joined forces to make their case to port commissioners to save the site. While some port leaders were sympathetic to the cause, members of the Terminal Islanders said the group had not yet received any concrete information about the port's intentions.

The port told the Times that there are currently no formal plans or timeline for changes to the buildings, but that there have been “internal discussions among staff about the long-term future of the buildings, including the possibility of demolition.”

“Any changes to the site would be made through a formal and public process, including public participation and a vote by the Los Angeles Port Commission. The involvement of the Terminal Islanders group would be critical to any process involving changes to the site,” said Port of Los Angeles spokesman Phillip Sanfield.

Port Commission President Lucille Roybal-Allard, Los Angeles City Councilman Tim McOsker and port management plan to tour the buildings in the first week of September, Sanfield said, before the port organizes a meeting with representatives of the Terminal Islanders.

“Our top priority in this matter [is] to gather input and ideas directly from the Terminal Islanders group for the future of the site,” said Sanfield.

As shipping forecasts have risen for one of the world's busiest seaports, officials have allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for warehouse and rail expansion, redevelopment and electrification projects and other things. An $18.2 million demolition project currently in the planning stages on Terminal Island calls for clearing the land near the old StarKist cannery and making it available for lease. The area is about a mile from the Tuna Street buildings.

The Terminal Islanders Club is working with the Los Angeles Conservancy and the National Trust for Historic Preservation to seek a landmark designation for the buildings before any plans are made, said Paul Boyea, a Terminal Islanders board member. And nearly 1,000 people have signed an online and physical petition to prevent potential destruction.

“We want to protect the legacy of the Terminal Islanders,” said Boyea. “We don’t just want to preserve [the buildings] – we want to restore them, we want to renovate them. Maybe there is another end use for the buildings. There are many different things that can be done.”

Boyea and others have discussed the possibility of converting the buildings into a museum or art installation, or moving them elsewhere if possible.

Today, paint is peeling off the boarded-up buildings and stray cats roam the deserted street outside. A Port of Los Angeles “No Trespassing” sign hangs on the wall and the floor is littered with empty beer cans run over by cars. Across the gravel road is a huge parking lot where containers are stored. Next door is a now-closed Korean convenience store and more than 100 yards down the road is the water. Trucks, cranes and more shipping containers fill the background.

What remains of the village of Terminal Island stands in stark contrast to the once bustling village of about 3,000 that was the backbone of the fishing industry from the turn of the century until World War II. Cannery workers listened for the whistles that signaled boats coming in with the day's catch. The area teemed with storefronts and houses, a Japanese gate that adorned the entrance to a Shinto shrine, a Buddhist temple, a Baptist church, a bank, a school, and halls where people gathered for meetings and celebrations. Tuna Street was considered a central shopping area.

According to the Los Angeles Conservancy, a 1917 Pacific Fisherman article stated: “The Japanese have taught the Americans and everyone else how to catch tuna in commercial quantities, and they are the best fishermen in the business. Therefore, the packers vie with each other in offering them attractive quarters near their respective factories.”

Miho Shiroishi, 91, was born on the island in the 1930s. She still goes to the area just to remember life before the war. Her mother and four siblings were put in one camp when she was nine, and her father in another. When she returned, her house on Cannery Street no longer existed. But at least the streets, she says, remained.

“I'll be 92 in November this year, but I can still drive. That's why I go to Terminal Island as often as possible,” Shiroishi said. “Without [the two buildings]what's wrong with you? Nothing.”

Terminal Islanders Club president and one of Yamamoto's friends from kindergarten, Terry Hara, said plans for the future of the buildings should be a collaboration of ideas “with the well-being of all at the center.”

Hara, who became the first Asian American to be promoted to captain in the Los Angeles Police Department in 1998 and whose parents lived on Terminal Island, said he and others believe preserving history is key to educating people about the past.

“This particular place plays a small role compared to the historical experience of Japanese Americans, but it is an important part and it is where you learn about the tuna industry. It started in Los Angeles,” Hara said of the industry, which relied heavily on fishing techniques brought from Japan. “It plays an important role in educating those who will come after us.”

Alice Nagano, 90, was 7 when her family was evicted from Terminal Island and taken to the Manzanar relocation center in Inyo County. She said her childhood memories of her first home are limited, but she remembers the close-knit community feeling safe enough to sleep with the doors unlocked.

“If we have these buildings there, it will at least show that we had a community,” she said. “When they are torn down, there will be no reminder of it.”

About a mile off Tuna Street, not far from the federal prison, stands a memorial to Terminal Island. Two bronze fishermen sit on a time capsule from 2002, and the names of Terminal Island residents are etched into a surrounding wall. A drawing of the old village sits on glass, giving people a chance to imagine what it once was like. And a poem pays tribute to “our village no longer exists.”

A brief history of the town accompanies prints of black-and-white photographs—old houses, parades, the local hardware store, and Yamamoto's grandfather and his old grocery store.

“My parents are dead now and there are really only a little more than a handful of the original members left,” Hara reflected. “When I was younger, I didn't think much of it, but now I feel I have a small responsibility to carry on their memory and history.”

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.