New Virtual Tour Celebrates Portland’s Japanese American Community

New Virtual Tour Celebrates Portland’s Japanese American Community

The recent demolition of the former Yamaguchi Hotel is a poignant reminder of the persistent erasure of the Japanese American community’s history and impact on our region. Restore Oregon applauds the efforts of our friends and colleagues at The Architectural Heritage Center and the Japanese American Museum of Oregon to tell Oregon’s full story in the face of these challenges with the recent release of A Forgotten Community: A Tour of Portland's Lost Japanese American Community, a digital storytelling map. The interactive story map, publicly accessible to all online, highlights 20 different locations that were core to the establishment of Portland’s Japanese American community, especially in the area of Northwest Portland known as Japantown—Nihonmachi, in Japanese—in the early 1900s.