Tag: cars

Start Your Engines for Our New Exhibition, “Cruising J-Town”

Helen Yoshida Leave a comment

Roll with us to Pasadena for JANM’s new exhibition, Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community (free admission, reservations recommended)! Curated by writer and scholar, Dr. Oliver Wang, this exhibition dives into the people, places, and stories of Japanese American car scenes throughout Los Angeles.

At the center of the exhibition are five classic cars that highlight the themes of Speed, Style, Work, and Community: George Nakamura’s 1940s “Meteor” hot rod; Brian Omatsu’s custom 1951 Mercury coupe known as the “Purple Reign”; a 1956 Ford F100 pickup truck owned by Kirk Shimazu; Tod Kaneko’s 1973 Datsun 510, one of the models that launched the import car craze; and a hot pink 1989 Nissan 240SX from professional drift racing driver Nadine Sachiko Toyoda-Hsu’s days with the Drifting Pretty team.

Over one hundred objects—including rare photographs and home movies and memorabilia from car clubs, service stations, race car drivers, and collectors—show the breadth and depth of the Japanese American community in the hot rod, import tuner craze, drift racing, and low rider scenes as well as the central role that cars and trucks played in the working lives of Japanese Americans.

The Atomettes’ Karlene (née Nakanishi) Koketsu and Sadie (née Inatomi) Hifumi in sitting in the backseat of Susan Uemura’s Bel Air enroute to San Francisco, 1956. Japanese American National Museum, Gift of The Atomettes, 2023.48.9

Cruising J-Town will be on view from Thursday, July 31 through Friday, November 12, 2025, at the ArtCenter’s Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery (1111 South Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena, CA 91105). The gallery will be open from Wednesday through Sunday from 12 p.m.–5 p.m.

So come out to Pasadena and enjoy the sights and sounds of American car culture in Los Angeles through the lens of the Japanese American community! You can also take the exhibition home with you when you purchase the companion book and other fun gifts online from the JANM Store’s Cruising J-Town Collection.

JANM’s Discover Nikkei is also working with Wang on a new series of articles and testimonials related to the personal, family, and community stories and histories covered in the exhibition and the companion book. Check out stories from the new Cruising J-Town: Side Trips and stay on the lookout for a new story every week or so that dives into the rich history and ways that Southern California Nikkei engage in the world of cars and trucks.

Car club jackets from the Paladins, courtesy of the Nagai Family; the Shogans, courtesy of Roy T. Yanase, D.D.S.; and the Apostles, courtesy of Howard Isasaki.

Related Public Programs

And don’t forget to mark your calendars for these exciting Cruising J-Town public programs and special events for JANM Members at JANM and ArtCenter too! Check janm.org/CruisingJTown/events for updates and we’ll see you there!

Opening Reception for Cruising J-Town

Thursday, July 31, 2025
5 p.m.–7 p.m.
Admission: Free and open to the public

Celebrate Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel with the Nikkei Community with an opening reception hosted by the ArtCenter College of Design!

Nadine Sachiko Hsu’s 1989 Nissan 240SX from the Drifting Pretty racing team. Courtesy of Nadine Sachiko Toyoda-Hsu.

From the Street to the World: Legacies of the Import Car Scene

Saturday, August 30, 2025
2 p.m.–3:30 p.m.
Admission: $5 (free for youth under 18 and JANM Members)

Join exhibition curator Dr. Oliver Wang and special guests in the world of import tuners from the 1970s through today for an insightful panel discussion about how street racers shaped the future of American car culture through their adoptions and innovations with Japanese import cars.

Cruising J-Town Mini-Meet: Street Racers Reunion

Saturday, September 13, 2025
10 a.m.–12 p.m.
Admission: Free

Grab a cup of coffee and join the street racing and import tuner scene reunion featuring a selection of a dozen cars that reflect the merging of two scenes that many Japanese Americans and Asian Americans participated in from the 1970s through the 2000s. This event is organized in partnership with Darin Dohi, a former street racer with Gardena’s KMA.

Brian Omatsu’s 1951 Mercury Coupe, the “Purple Reign.” Courtesy of Brian Omatsu.

Fish Truck Family Reunion

Saturday, October 25, 2025
2 p.m.–3:30 p.m.
Admission: $5 (free for youth under 18 and JANM Members)

For over forty years, Nikkei fish trucks delivered fresh seafood, rice, and other Japanese goods to homes across Los Angeles. They also provided a valuable community service by bringing a taste of home six days a week to Nikkei throughout the greater Los Angeles area. This special event features testimonies from the families of half a dozen former fish truck operators, with rare photographs and home movies. Read more about fish truck history with Chelsea Shi-Chao Liu’s Discover Nikkei article, “Remembering the L.A. Retail Fish Association.”

JANM Members Morning Preview

Saturday, August 2, 2025
10 a.m.– 12 p.m.
Admission: Members only. Interested in becoming a Member? Join now!

Join exhibition curator Dr. Oliver Wang for an exclusive morning preview of Cruising J-Town and a conversation about car culture across the generations of Southern California Nikkei.

JANM Members Curator Tours

Thursday, September 25, 2025, from 5 p.m.–7 p.m.
Tuesday, October 18, 2025, from 11 a.m.–1 p.m.
Admission: Members only. Interested in becoming a Member? Join now!

Join exhibition curator Dr. Oliver Wang for an in-depth conversation about car culture across the generations of Southern California Nikkei.

Featured image: A photo collage of images from JANM’s exhibition, Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community. The exhibition is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities with additional support from the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, Sunco Industries, Co. Ltd., and Don & Ellen Mizota. The media sponsor is The Rafu Shimpo, and the promotional partners are Formula DRIFT, Japanese Classic Car Show, Mooneyes, and Toyota Owner’s and Restorer’s Club. Photo collage by Doug Mukai.

Got a Work Truck Story? We Want to Hear It!

Helen Yoshida Leave a comment

The humble work truck or van may not seem as glamorous as a sports coupe or luxury sedan but as utility vehicles, they have served Japanese Americans in Los Angeles for over 100 years. Established by Fred J. Fujioka in the mid-1910s, the Japanese Auto Club of Southern California had over 850 members of Japanese descent listed in their member guide. Many members had registered their trucks, presumably used for delivering goods throughout the Southland.

Farmers, gardeners, shop owners, and other working class Nikkei couldn’t ply their trades without access to work vehicles. As prosaic as they looked, the ways in which owners adapted them to their needs made them as unique as any custom car. This was especially true for gardeners, once the economic lifeblood of the Southern California’s Japanese American community, for whom the pickup truck became an iconic sight for several generations.

As part of our forthcoming exhibition on Nikkei car culture in Southern California, we are looking for images of local Japanese Americans with their work trucks, vans, and cars. Many people may have posed in front of their family cars but we know there are also photos of people with their utility vehicles too. We want to make sure these—and the people behind them—are properly represented in our exhibition.

Right now, we prefer to look at digital scans (if possible). Please send them to cars@janm.org by July 31, 2023.

Photo: Buntaro Tabuchi from Amache with his gardening tools and truck, loading up for the day’s work in Los Angeles, June 25, 1945, Online Archive of California. Photo by Charles E. Mace.

New Nikkei Car Clubs Story on Discover Nikkei

June Magsaysay Leave a comment

Mikado Car Club
Members of the Mikado Car Club show off their cars in the parking lot of the Evergreen Hostel on Evergreen Avenue, C. 1960. Japanese American National Museum. Gift of Richard Sugi (2002.68.1.).

Dr. Oliver Wang, a professor of Sociology at California State University, Long Beach, has recently authored a new story about Nikkei car culture for JANM’s Discover Nikkei website. Here’s an excerpt:

The history of Japanese Americans in Los Angeles car culture dates back at least as early as the 1910s when Fred Fujioka teamed up with George Kawamoto to found F&K Garage in Little Tokyo. By the late 1930s, a prominent number of Niseis became involved in the local hot rod racing scene, most famously Glendale’s Okamura brothers, lead by champion racer Yam “Oka”. Executive Order 9066 forced most of these drivers into the camps though, in some cases, non-Nikkei friends kept cars and motors safe for them during the course of internment. Racers like Yam Oka picked up where they off and resumed racing after resettlement.

Apostles club patch
The club patch for The Apostles, out of Gardena. Photo by Oliver Wang.

The Nikkei car clubs that arose in the 1950s belonged to what might be described as a “lost” generation of Nisei and Sansei youth born in/around internment. I call them “lost” because most of the existing scholarship tends to either focus on Niseis of their parents’ generation or Sanseis born during the post-war baby boom. The Nikkei youth of the 1950s fall in between these eras: they were children in the camps and during resettlement and entered teen-hood during the 1950s.

Within the Nikkei community, the obvious antecedent to the car clubs were Nisei social clubs, many of which date back to the 1920s. UCLA’s Valerie Matsumoto has done exceptional work in documenting these clubs, especially in her book City Girls, and she notes that these social clubs quickly reformed post-internment by providing a source of “camaraderie and recreation…amid the disruptions of resettlement and the exigencies of finding work.” As such, forming a social club wouldn’t have been unusual for Nikkei teens in the 1950s except now, they were adding cars to the mix.

The general car club phenomenon in the U.S. dates back to the 1920s but it was the postwar era where things revved up. Not only was the American car industry entering into a golden age of production but this was also the birth of modern American consumerism which compelled many families to purchase new cars and that, in turn, created a robust used car market that helped working and middle class teenagers buy their first cars. As John DeWitt writes in his study of car culture of the ’50s, Cool Cars, High Art, “No longer were kids forced to drive old jalopies or the family sedan; they could pick and choose from a wide variety of fairly new used cars that were available for as little as a few hundred dollars. It was important…that these cars were their cars. They were free to do with them as they wished.”

Shogans car plaque
The plaque for The Shogans, another Gardena/Torrance area club. Photo by Oliver Wang.

Squires car plaque
The car plaque for the Squires, a Nikkei club out of Boyle Heights. Photo by Oliver Wang.

You can read the whole article here on Discover Nikkei. Dr. Wang wants to explore this subject further so be sure to reach out to him if you have stories of Nikkei car clubs to share or suggestions for his research.

Discover Nikkei articles explore everything from family stories to food, language to art, education to…cars. Take a look around—there’s something interesting for everyone.