Images of America Japanese Americans of the South Bay

Images of America- Japanese Americans of the South Bay By Dale Ann SatoEarly 20th century settlers in Los Angeles Country's South Bay region found fallow rancho land worthy of cultivation as well as roads and railways to move produce markets. First generation Japanese Issei immigrants became pioneering strawberry vegetable and flower growers and cannery Fishermen. Their fields blanketed the landscape between oil derricks and along sloughs and the dry-farmed coastline. Families pooled resources and built Japanese language schools for their American-born Nisei children that doubled as meeting halls. Today South Bay is home to multigenerational Japanese and Asian Americans who contimue that legacy of industry beautification and diversity.